Voice of the Desert
by lionesseyes13
Summary: The story of Zahir's years as squire to King Jonathan.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This story was written thanks to several reviews on my _Death of Innocence _fanfiction that requested I write a sort of Zahir saga. Although some of the characters like Aisha who appeared in that fic will also show up in this story and some of the events that happened in that story are referred to in this one, it isn't necessary for readers to be familiar with that fic.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot and any original characters introduced throughout the fic.

Reviews: Are very welcome, since I always like to gauge whether I should continue a multi-chapter fic.

World Turned Upside Down

As far as Zahir ibn Alhaz was concerned, the novelty of being a squire hadn't worn off yet. It didn't even matter that he hadn't been chosen as a personal squire to a knight yet. After all, he had only become a squire two days ago, and none of his friends had been picked so far. As long as he wasn't selected after Garvey or Vinson, he would be happy. If he was chosen after Garvey or Vinson, he would lose all faith in Tortallan knighthood.

However, he wasn't going to entertain such a bizarre possibility as either Garvey or Vinson being picked before him. Instead, he was going to focus all his attention on his practice sword bout with Joren, because there were about a dozen knights leaning against the training yard fence, and Zahir wanted to impress them with his agility and fighting abilities.

Actually, when he thought about it, if his goal was to impress as many knights as possible, maybe he should make a habit of fencing with Garvey or Vinson, even though, since his father had died, Zahir had less patience for the two boys who seemed to be all brawn and no brains. After all, Garvey's sloppy footwork and Vinson's slow reflexes would have shown Zahir in a better light than Joren's quick feet and reflexes did. Zahir was still the most graceful of the new squires, but it was less obvious when he was paired with Joren.

He had made the mistake of allowing himself to get distracted, he realized a second later, as he felt the sting of a practice sword slicing into his forearm.

"Got you," Joren remarked, grinning as he launched another attack.

Returning his awareness completely to the duel, Zahir somersaulted backward, and then twisted to assault Joren from the left, cutting off the hem of Joren's tunic.

"Missed me by a league," teased Joren, dancing a retreat. The gleam in his sky blue eyes told Zahir that his oldest friend at the Royal Palace was having fun.

His lips tightening determinedly, Zahir thought that his foe might have been having fun, but he was serious. Reversing swiftly, Zahir ducked and rushed at his opponent. Satisfaction rose up inside him when Joren almost stumbled in surprise.

Taking advantage of his friend's unbalance, Zahir decided to dictate the pace of the battle, rather than leaving that to Joren. He attacked aggressively, and then stepped back to lure the other teenager forward. When Joren moved into his trap, Zahir landed a blow on Joren's arm in revenge for the cut on his forearm.

As the sun pounded down on the practice court, he was grateful for growing up in the desert, because he wasn't sweating as much as Joren was. That meant that his right hand wasn't slippery when he gripped his sword and his vision wasn't blurred by his own sweat.

The heat was plainly tiring his friend, though, and Zahir took advantage of this to leap forward and lightly touch Joren's neck with his weapon. "Yield or lose your head," he said, acting like this were a real duel instead of a practice bout.

"I yield." Joren raised his palms in surrender, and Zahir lowered his sword.

As the two of them crossed to the other end of the yard to return their practice weapons to the barrel, Zahir commented, as custom required, "Good fight, Joren."

"Don't tell me it was a good fight when you won, not me," snorted Joren.

"My winning is what made it good," Zahir explained, his tone mocking as he shoved his practice sword into the keg. "If you had won, it wouldn't have been any good at all."

"It wouldn't have been any good for you," answered Joren, dropping his sword into the hogshead as well. "For me, though, it would have been."

"I'm not worried about what's best for you." Zahir shrugged as they made their way across the training court. "I'm concerned with what's best for me."

All of the knights who had been watching the fight had disappeared except for one man wearing the Nond colors who appeared to be in his early thirties. While Zahir and Joren were exiting the practice yard, this knight rested a hand on Joren's shoulder and asked, "May I have a word with you?"

"Of course, sir." Joren bowed, showing all of his perfect white teeth in the alluring smile he always offered whenever he wanted to charm someone.

"I'll be in the mess hall with Garvey and Vinson, so you can join us whenever you'd like," Zahir whispered to Joren. Then, with a bow to Nond knight, he walked back up to the palace.

On his path to the mess hall, Zahir suspected that Joren would soon have a knightmaster. Although he knew that he should have been happy for his friend, he wasn't. There was a nasty part of him that wanted to be picked first. That element of him made it impossible for him to celebrate his best friend's achievement. Trying to lessen the guilt that coursed through him at this realization, he reminded himself that after the competitiveness that four years of brutal page training under Wyldon had instilled in him, it would have been unnatural if he had been able to delight in Joren's accomplishment, Zahir entered the mess hall, grabbed a tray of food, and plopped down on a bench across from Garvey and Vinson.

"Where's Joren?" Vinson inquired, eating a whole roll in one bite, the instant Zahir had settled himself.

"Mithros, Vinson, I know you're thicker than Raven armor, but did you learn anything during Master Oakbridge's lessons?" Zahir rolled his eyes. "Surely, he or your mother must have told you at least a hundred times that it's disgusting to talk with your mouth full of food."

"You shouldn't have to be polite near your friends." Unperturbed, Vinson continued to speak and shovel food into his mouth at the same time. "Besides, when you have only a short time to eat meals, you have to talk with your mouth full of food, or else you'll either go hungry or never get to speak with your friends at all."

"Anyway, you didn't answer his question," added Garvey. "Joren was fencing with you. Where did he go?"

"A Nond knight wanted to talk to him after our little practice duel," Zahir replied. "Somehow, I think that Joren will have a knightmaster by the time that he joins us."

"Good for him," grunted Garvey. "I think I saw Jeral of Nenan watching me while I was practicing archery with Vinson."

"And I think that a Rosemark knight had his eye on me," Vinson announced.

"Great. I'm really glad to hear that," Zahir muttered dully, lying through his teeth. Truthfully, he couldn't be more depressed. It wasn't fair that all of his companions were moving ahead while he was standing still. He could tolerate Joren being chosen before him, because Joren was talented at the fighting arts and wasn't an idiot, but Garvey and Vinson were not the sharpest knives in the drawer and their fighting technique was more about force than skill. It grated on Zahir that he wasn't being picked, especially because he was starting to believe that it had something to do with his ancestry….Nobles and servants were always staring at him and other Bazhir, so it wouldn't be too astonishing if the fear of white Tortallan knights prevented them from taking on any squires who were of Bazhir descent.

"Not as glad as you're going to be when you hear that I am a squire to Sir Paxton of Nond, a conservative knight from an old family," Joren chimed into the conversation without warning, as he dropped his tray down and sat next to Zahir. Once he had accepted the congratulations of his friends, he went on, "Anyway, Zahir, you don't have to worry about being chosen despite your background. There are always progressives who are willing to take on a Bazhir squire to show that they aren't prejudiced."

"Of course. It displays a complete lack of prejudice to choose someone to be your squire because they are of a different race than you, and you wish to prove that you are blind to minor details like skin color," mumbled Zahir sardonically.

"All progressives are hypocrites." As he established as much, Joren speared a piece of chicken with his fork and popped it into his mouth.

"At any rate, I don't think any progressive will ask for me as squire, since I'm a Bazhir, and Bazhir beliefs are far more conservative than progressive," Zahir pointed out.

"Well, I'm not sure why you would want a progressive knightmaster, anyway." Based on his words, Joren seemed to have forgotten that he had been trying to console Zahir with a promise that a progressive would pick him as a squire. "If one asked me, I would say no. It's better to be unattached than to be attached to a progressive."

"You only say that because you aren't unattached anymore." Miserably, Zahir shook his head. "At this point, I think I would say yes to a vegetable if it asked me to be its squire."

"Don't be a moron." Joren waved a dismissive hand. "It's only been two days since we were made squires."

"It feels like it's been a lifetime when I have to sit around and watch all of you get matched up with knights." Again, Zahir shook his head.

"You have plenty of time to be chosen," Joren tried again. "Most of our yearmates haven't been selected yet. Relax."

Zahir opened his mouth to retort that it was easy to relax when your future was assured, but he was chopped off when someone taped him on the shoulder, saying, "Zahir?"

"What?" snapped Zahir, whirling around to face Quinden of Marti's Hill, a page whom Zahir had sponsored what felt like a lifetime ago.

"I'm sorry to interrupt." Recognizing the danger in Zahir's tone, Quinden hastened to appease him. "It's just that His Majesty requested your presence in his council chamber at the fifth bell this evening."

Wondering what in all the Eastern Lands King Jonathan wished to see him about, Zahir automatically thanked Quinden for delivering the message.

"What does the king want to see you about?" demanded Joren, gaping at Zahir as Quinden scampered off to join some fellow pages for the meal.

"I don't know," responded Zahir, his forehead furrowing pensively. "King Jonathan is the Voice of the Bazhir, and I am officially a chief, although I temporarily handed over much of my power to my cousin Nadir, since I am busy training to be a knight and don't have time to rule properly. Perhaps the king wants to talk to me in my capacity as chief."

"No doubt that's the case," agreed Joren, and then shifted the topic to how beautiful he found Lady Calanthe of Eder.

However, Zahir didn't pay the slightest attention to Joren's lengthy, dreamy description of Lady Calanthe's eyes, ears, nose, hair, skin, and waist, because he was too preoccupied with pondering what King Jonathan wanted to meet with him about. Since he had appointed Nadir to represent him, he didn't involve himself much in the governing of his tribe, and the Voice didn't bother himself with trivial matters, anyway. That meant that the king's reason for summoning him was serious, and, in his experience, serious was a synonym for bad….Maybe King Jonathan had received word that Nadir had died. That certainly would be bad enough news to warrant summoning Zahir…

His stomach twisted at the notion, and he prayed fervently that this wouldn't be the case. He pleaded with the pitiless Black God to remember that Nadir was younger than Zahir was even, and to show mercy upon an adolescent who was purer than him. He implored the Black God to take into account how much Zahir's whole tribe needed Nadir's leadership, and how the tribe had already been shaken when Uncle Kamal, Nadir's father, had murdered Zahir's father―the former chief and older brother of Kamal. Then, he begged the Black God to recall that Zahir wasn't ready to rule yet, and perhaps he never would be, no matter what King Jonathan had said after he had made Zahir chief. After all, it was entirely possible that the Voice had been mistaken when he said that Zahir had the capacity to become a good chief. Personally, Zahir doubted very much that this was the case, and, if he was fit to rule, surely he would have noticed that by now.

By the time he had finished his fervid mental prayers, Joren had finally concluded his description of Lady Calanthe's incredible beauty, and so the four young men rose and returned their trays to the kitchen.

As he left the mess hall with his companions and headed back to Joren's room to help his closest friend move into a chamber adjoining Sir Paxton's quarters, Zahir tried to convince himself that he was overreacting when he immediately assumed that King Jonathan wanted to speak with him because Nadir was dead.

He had managed to persuade himself that Nadir wasn't dead until he heard otherwise, after all, by the time he, Garvey, and Vinson had assisted Joren in moving to the room adjacent to Sir Paxton's chambers. Sadly, the great strides he had taken in soothing his nerves vanished with every step he took toward the council room at a few minutes before the fifth bell of the evening.

When he arrived outside the council chamber, he took a deep breath to prepare himself as much as he could to hear about another tragic death in the family, and then knocked on the engraved maple door.

"Come in," a strong voice shouted from within, and Zahir complied, stepping into an enormous, richly furnished room that swallowed him completely, as the bell tolled five times. Looking around the expansive chamber, Zahir's feeling of insignificance only increased when he realized that he was in the room alone with King Jonathan. This chamber was too large for him, and he certainly didn't deserve to be by himself with royalty in such a place. Only council members warranted being alone with the king in such a room.

"Zahir ibn Alhaz." King Jonathan's piercing sapphire eyes scanned the addressed from head to toe, and Zahir wished that he wasn't paralyzed by the intensity of the monarch's gaze. Right now, all he wanted to do was flee from those penetrating eyes that must have already detected all of his petty vices and grave shortcomings, especially since those eyes were attached to a man who was probably going to explain to him in an authoritative but somehow not unsympathetic tone that Nadir was no longer among the living. "You're right on time."

"Lord Wyldon taught us to be punctual." Zahir's body finally remembered to bow, and his brain scolded his muscles for not recalling to do so the moment he entered the council room. "Your Majesty chose your training master well."

"I think that I have picked my training master well, although I imagine that many pages would disagree with me about that." King Jonathan flashed a grin, and some of the tension coiled in Zahir's chest eased. Certainly, the king wouldn't be jesting like this if he were about to inform Zahir that his cousin had perished. By both Tortallan and Bazhir standards, that would be a severe breach in etiquette. His smile still in place, Jonathan continued, waving a hand at one of the chairs surrounding the gigantic council table, "Please be seated. Let's not stand on ceremony."

As Zahir obediently slid into the indicated seat, King Jonathan observed, "I don't suppose that you have any idea why I have summoned you here, Zahir."

"Does it have anything to do with my people, Your Majesty?" asked Zahir. It had to do with his tribe, he told himself, because there was no other cause for the Voice to wish to converse with him, but the real question was what had happened to his people that was horrible enough to require the Voice to involve himself.

"Everything you do impacts your people in some fashion, and so this discussion, like every one you will engage in while you are chief, has something to do with your tribe." Again, King Jonathan's gaze lanced into Zahir, and the teenager wondered if now would be the moment when the Voice stripped him of his rank as chief. The Voice was such a skilled leader that he had to spot that Zahir was nothing more than a little boy pretending to be chief. He had to recognize that the self-confidence that Zahir always strove to project to such a degree that many of his peers regarded him as arrogant was really just a pathetic sham he had constructed to conceal his many insecurities. The Voice had to see that his poise was a façade he had developed in the pages' wing when he learned that those who acted strong didn't get pushed around while those who acted weak did. His mask could fool almost everyone, but he didn't believe that it would trick King Jonathan with his bright eyes that were designed to flesh out the truth in every situation. "However, this conversation won't directly pertain to your people, no."

"In that case, I have no clue what Your Majesty wishes to speak with me about," Zahir admitted, inwardly kicking himself for sounding ignorant before the most important being in the realm. His tendency to make an idiot of himself was exactly the reason why he shouldn't be allowed to be alone with the king.

"Good." King Jonathan smiled again. This time, remembering that authority figures approved of underlings who seemed amused by their quips, Zahir bullied his lips into offering a grin that probably appeared agonizingly artificial. "People listen to me better when they don't believe that they know what I am going to say next. Anyway, Zahir, I wanted to speak with you now, since I wished to ensure that nobody would have a chance to ask you to be their squire before I did."

"I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but I was careless and didn't hear you properly," stammered Zahir, forgetting his manners enough to gawk at the king as though he had just transformed into a cactus. "I thought you just said that you wanted me to be your squire."

"You heard and thought correctly," King Jonathan educated him dryly.

"With all due respect, Your Majesty, I can't be your squire." Feeling as if the world as he knew it had inexplicably flipped upside down, Zahir shook his head vehemently. "I may not be familiar with all the nuances of Tortallan culture, but I do know that you're supposed to take your son as squire, not me."

"Traditions are not laws, Zahir." King Jonathan shrugged, and Zahir could see that this ruler who had no problem breaking a thousand customs wouldn't have any issue with shattering one more. "There is no law that states that I have to take Roald as my squire."

"Your Majesty, Prince Roald won't be pleased by your decision." Zahir was just making this objection up based on how he would feel if tradition demanded that his father choose him for something, and his father violated that custom, utterly humiliating him in the process by essentially declaring him unworthy of the honor. The truth was that he could not know what would please or displease Roald, as the crown prince rarely expressed his feelings on any subject.

"I've already spoken with Roald," King Jonathan answered smoothly. "He understands my reasons for picking you as a squire, instead of him, and he trusts my judgment in this. He also realizes that, as crown prince, he will not have any difficulty finding a competent knightmaster to instruct him once it becomes clear that I do not intend to take him myself."

"Perhaps he was agreeing with you out of politeness." Zahir's thought emerged as a mutter without his knowledge or consent, because Roald seemed like the sort of person who would agree to something crazy in the name of politeness. The instant Zahir recognized what he had said, he wished that he had more of Prince Roald's politeness. After all, one did not mumble comments like he just had under one's breath around the king, since that crossed the fine line that separated confidence from sheer impudence.

Before he could attempt to salvage the situation with an apology, King Jonathan fixed cold blue eyes upon him that rendered it impossible for him to breathe, nonetheless talk. Suddenly, as the king's hard gaze riveted on him, Zahir felt the blood in his veins freeze. It truly hit him that this man, as the Voice, had the power of life or death over him, and that the majesty King Jonathan emitted when he made Zahir chief and when he spoke to Zahir after his father's cremation were nothing compared to the mighty aura that encircled him now.

"My son trusts my judgment," King Jonathan announced, his tone quiet but somehow containing all the menace of a bellow. "Perhaps you should do the same, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"I trust your judgment, my liege," responded Zahir immediately not only because Lord Wyldon had taught him that if you were fond of being alive, you should do your best to pacify any authority figures you might have vexed, but also because the truth was that he did trust King Jonathan. Not only was Jonathan the Voice, which meant that all the wisdom of countless generations of Bazhir swirled around inside him, but the man was so charismatic that it was difficult not to accept that he knew what was best for the entire country, even if his decisions appeared absolutely illogical.

"Good." The look in King Jonathan's eyes softened slightly. "If you are to be a knight of mine, you should get into the habit of trusting my judgment. Now, if you think, Zahir, you will see that there is no rational reason for you not to be my squire. After all, if you are willing to serve me for life as a knight, then you should have no problem with being my squire for four years."

"I'm not worthy of being your squire, Your Majesty," Zahir protested, even as he thought that he would prefer to be the squire of an active knight, rather than the king. Being the king's squire was undeniably a prestigious position, but it was also, as far as he could discern, a boring one. Of course, he couldn't establish as much to King Jonathan, even if the Voice might be able to read some of his thoughts, anyway, thanks to the mystical link the Voice shared with all Bazhir. "The only person worthy of being your squire this year is Prince Roald."

"Don't let traditions limit you," admonished King Jonathan. "There are more options in life than you seem willing to contemplate, and that's a shame. Often enough, there is a logic behind a custom, just as the reasoning behind keeping a crown prince beside his father is to prepare the crown prince to take the throne upon his father's death. Even though there is often a logic behind tradition, it is unwise to act as though abiding by custom is the only choice any of us possess. On many occasions, the untraditional decision is more prudent than the conventional one. In this situation, that is the case, since Roald is ready to take my place when I die, and there are things that I want to teach you-only you―that you can only learn from me."

"I don't suppose that Your Majesty would care to elaborate on what those things I can only learn from you are." Intrigued by the king's final cryptic comment, Zahir arched his eyebrows.

"I shall tell you someday, Zahir, but that day isn't today." King Joanthan's eyes sparkled enigmatically.

"With all due respect, Your Majesty, I haven't agreed to be your squire yet," Zahir scowled sullenly. He didn't appreciate the king taking his consent for granted, since the decision to accept a knightmaster's offer was the only choice that a squire was guaranteed to have in the knightmaster-squire relationship. Of course, if you were asked by the king, you could hardly refuse, so you didn't actually have a choice at all…Still, King Jonathan could have at least been courteous enough to allow him the illusion of having some control over which knight he was squire to.

"When you started page training you agreed to serve the realm as the Crown deemed best, not how you deemed best," King Jonathan pointed out.

"I would be honored to be your squire, Your Majesty." Zahir bowed his head, deciding that his hand of cards was too weak to continue playing, and folding it, instead, to minimize his losses.

"Wonderful." King Jonathan offered a nod of satisfaction, and then assured him, "You have my word, Zahir, that one day you will understand the reasoning behind my asking you to be my squire. When you do, you will see that my actions were right, but, for now, I want you to trust me. Trust is the foundation of any relationship. Without it, every relationship is built on sand and will crumble into the sea under the slightest pressure."

"Yes, Your Majesty," replied Zahir in a hushed tone, because there didn't seem any other response he could make under the circumstances.


	2. Chapter 2

Standing Still

"I can't believe that the king asked you to be his squire," Joren mumbled later that evening, as he, Garvey, and Vinson helped Zahir unpack in Zahir's new room, which was attached to the seemingly endless royal chambers. "For Mithros' sake, he's supposed ask Roald to be his squire. I mean, there's no reason for him not to want Roald to be his squire when Roald is a fine enough fighter. Even if he weren't, tradition dictates that, as heir to the throne, he should be chosen as squire by his father. Traditions should be followed. If they aren't, it won't be long before we are all lost."

"His Majesty would disagree with you," answered Zahir flatly, shoving some tunics into a dresser drawer. "I've already been told that traditions aren't laws, and that it is unwise to be limited by custom."

"That attitude is the reason the country is going to the jumped-up merchants and the sewer muckers," scowled Joren. "If the people on the top don't respect tradition, those on the bottom won't either, and society will crumble."

"Well, King Jonathan's view certainly isn't a Bazhir one," Zahir commented, tossing breeches into another dresser drawer. As he did so, he noted that the king might have been the Voice, but he hadn't been born and raised in the desert, and it showed. "Among the Bazhir, all our laws are unwritten, and so they are really nothing more than tradition."

Before Joren could reply, Garvey, who, along with Vinson, was making Zahir's bed, grunted, "Well, this whole conversation is pointless, because Roald has already accepted Lord Imrah's offer to be his squire."

Zahir was relieved to hear this piece of gossip, since, if the crown prince was squire to a man like Lord Imrah, he was less likely to bear a grudge against Zahir for being squire to the king. After all, being squire to Lord Imrah was probably more exciting than being squire to the king.

"This discussion is also stupid because Zahir has already agreed to serve King Jonathan as squire," added Garvey.

And I can't go back on my word now, finished Zahir mentally, as grim as if he were contemplating his own death.

"Speaking of that, Zahir, I don't understand why you accepted the king's offer," Joren said in a hard tone. "He's the progressive monarch responsible for the moral decline in Tortall. You should have refused to be his squire."

"I tried," Zahir snapped, his temper flaring. "Ultimately, you can't deny the king when you have already pledged your lifelong service to the Crown when you first became a page. Even if we disagree with King Jonathan, he's still the king, and his will must be done."

"I don't see why anyone would want a squire that they had to essentially force into the role." As he established as much, Joren studied his nails, as though they were of far more interest than the logic behind King Jonathan's apparently insane decisions.

"Neither do I." Zahir shook his head. "I don't even know why King Jonathan wants me to be his squire, anyway. When everything is averaged together, Roald and I are about equals in classwork and yard work, so it makes no sense to me why he would prefer me to his own heir."

"Taking you is probably just his latest scheme to shock people by needlessly violating another one of our realm's ancient customs," snorted Joren dismissively. "Believe me, that's all the rationality progressive leaders ever have behind their actions."

"His Majesty assured me that he had excellent reasons for picking me as his squire instead of Roald," Zahir informed his friend, as he belatedly recalled that it was a squire's duty to defend his knightmaster's honor. "I'm sure that I'll agree once he deems it time to fulfill his promise and share those reasons with me. Even if I don't, it is a squire's duty to obey his knightmaster."

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" demanded Joren icily, his eyes narrowing, and his arms folding across his chest.

"I wasn't aware there were sides to take at all," Zahir countered sharply.

"Of course there are," hissed Joren, glaring at him. "This is just another battle between those who would preserve the country's traditions and those who would throw them out like last night's pot roast."

Then, before Zahir could retort, Joren had stalked out of the room into the castle corridors without saying goodbye. For a moment, Garvey, Vinson, and Zahir all stared at the door Joren had slammed in his wake. Then, Garvey and Vinson mumbled something about needing their rest and hurried out of Zahir's bedroom, as well.

Just like that, Zahir was alone before he could truly process the departure of any of his friends. Feeling suddenly isolated in a palace full of people, he collapsed on his bed, looking gloomily up at the ceiling.

Honestly, what was he supposed to do? he furiously inquired of any deities who might be willing to listen to his internal rant. He couldn't refuse to be the king's squire, and he couldn't fail to complete his duties once he had accepted King Jonathan's offer, especially since a knight who couldn't serve his king properly was useless to the realm and didn't honor the most important ancient traditions binding a subject to his ruler.

Yet, by arguing that the king must have possessed valid reasons for acting as he did, and that, even if he didn't, the king must still be obeyed, Zahir had alienated the boys he had been friends with ever since he arrived at the Royal Palace. It stung worse than a slap across the face to realize how quickly his closest companions would leave him…

It wasn't fair that he had to be torn between his friends and doing his duty to his knightmaster, Zahir concluded bitterly. Being a squire was difficult enough without that added headache.

As if to punctuate his thoughts, a knock sounded on his door. Reluctantly, convinced that he would rather sulk by himself than deal with any more company at the present, he pushed himself off his bed and opened the door. A second later, he was facing King Jonathan, the man who was responsible for Zahir's estrangement from his friends, and, therefore, was to blame for all of his inner turmoil.

Even as he bowed, Zahir hoped that King Jonathan would conclude his business with him rapidly. At the moment, the less Zahir had to do with his new knightmaster, the better, because his knightmaster was just going to remind him of the rift that had suddenly developed between him and his friends.

"I see that you've settled in already." King Jonathan's keen eyes swept the room, and, seeing that his knightmaster had taken time away from the packed schedule of governing a country to check that he was comfortably moved into his new room, Zahir felt a surge of devotion for the man. So far, the king had invested a great deal more time and effort into Zahir than he had to, and he had never been anything less than civil with Zahir. When it came down to it, King Jonathan didn't have to treat Zahir kindly. Yet, he did so, anyway. For that alone, he deserved Zahir's respect. For that alone, Zahir was abruptly glad that he had defended the king to his friends.

"Some of my friends helped me move in, Your Majesty," Zahir responded, wishing that he could make his voice sound less heavy before King Jonathan decided that he wanted nothing to do with such a depressing squire.

"Wonderful." King Jonathan smiled as though it really mattered to him that his squire had settled in so quickly. "That's what friends are for, after all."

"That and for stomping off on you without warning," grumbled Zahir, his resentment at his friends' behavior spilling out of him without his permission.

King Jonathan paused for a few seconds, studying Zahir carefully, and then he remarked, "My decision to take you as my squire was unconventional to say the least. I can understand that it could upset your conservative friends."

"They only got cross at me when I told them that you must have a good reason behind your odd choice, and that, even if you didn't, you are the king and must be obeyed, Your Majesty," explained Zahir, shrugging hopelessly at the injustice of his friends' treatment of him. "I wasn't wrong. They're just being stupid."

"I see, and I appreciate your loyalty, Zahir." Reflectively, King Jonathan nodded. "Arguments between friends can hurt a great deal, but you should know that it is possible to move beyond them. When people are committed to maintaining a friendship, they can ultimately come to terms with each other's differing opinions on what is right in a given situation. Often, disagreements that seem as though they will shatter a relationship end up strengthening it in the long run. If that weren't the case, today I wouldn't be such close friends with my champion."

Here, Zahir arrived at the judicious conclusion that expressing his opinion that Alanna the Lioness was a cross-dressing, mercurial freak who was a distraction to male warriors would violate his current squire survival strategy of not needlessly antagonizing his knightmaster. Anyway, as a general rule, it was a poor choice for your future career to vex your king, and, besides, it was rude, ungrateful behavior to insult a close friend of a man who was trying to comfort you. This was especially true if all your friends were miffed at you, and you couldn't afford the emotional distress of having any more beings mad at you.

"Sometimes friends can grow apart, though, can't they, Your Majesty?" he said, instead, thinking this might be happening with him, Joren, Garvey, and Vinson. After all, he and Joren had argued fiercely when he had refused to participate in hazing first-years once he had recognized it as the idiotic, childish game that it was after his father died. As for Vinson and Garvey, his patience with the stocky but brainless pair had been dwindling for a long time. Perhaps now that they were no longer in page training together and didn't share a common pastime of tormenting first-years there was nothing left to bind the four of them.

"Yes, that unfortunately can occur," sighed the king, his bright gaze clouding. "When it does, it is a very painful experience. Recognizing that you have moved on while an old friend has stood still cuts into the heart, and can make a person feel like the loneliest individual alive."

"Your Majesty, I don't feel like I've moved at all," protested Zahir, shaking his head. "I feel like I've remained stationary while my friends have moved away from me."

"All motion is relative. Some scholars at the university have even suggested that if you moved fast enough, you would feel as though you were motionless, since nothing would appear to pass you," King Jonathan replied. "Perhaps it doesn't matter anyway whether it was you or your friends who moved. The fact remains that a distance has developed between you and your friends, which you hope won't become permanent. Now, the best way to prevent a breach from becoming permanent is to talk with the friends you are estranged from."

"Yes, Your Majesty." Zahir nodded. Then, remembering how easy it was for knights and squires to perish on border patrol and knowing that he didn't want Joren, Garvey, or Vinson to ride out on border patrols where they might die without sealing the rift that had sprung up between them, he added, "I'll talk to my friends tomorrow. Since I don't know when they'll leave, it's best that I resolve my problems with them as swiftly as possible."

"A prudent choice." King Jonathan bobbed his head in approval. "Now, you would do well to get some rest. I would like you to meet me at the practice courts at dawn, so that we have some time to train together before I have to attend a council meeting."

"I'll be there, Your Majesty," promised Zahir, bowing as the king turned and left his bedroom.

After his knightmaster departed, Zahir changed into his nightclothes, climbed into bed, and slipped beneath his covers. He didn't act only out of a desire to comply with an implied command; he was also genuinely exhausted after a stressful day entailing a completely unexpected offer to be squire to the king and a sudden spat with his friends.

Anyone would be tired after enduring all that, he told himself, as his head rested against his pillow, and his eyes drifted shut. As soon as his eyes closed, all thoughts faded from his mind, and he fell into the peaceful oblivion of a dreamless sleep.

All too soon, he was awoken by the pre-dawn chirping of the birds. Glowering as he grunted his daily threat of shooting all the birds surrounding the Royal Palace with his bow, Zahir stumbled out of bed. Then, after pulling on a shirt and breeches, he hurried down to the practice courts.

After an hour and a half of archery and fencing work with the king, Zahir was left to his own devices when his knightmaster went off to attend the council meeting. The first thing that Zahir did with his free time was search for his friends in the mess hall the pages and squires shared.

To his relief, he spotted them the moment he entered, and, resolutely, he grabbed a tray and plopped onto a bench next to Joren across from Garvey and Vinson.

"About what happened last night―" he started, trying to diminish the awkwardness that he felt by focusing as much attention as possible upon applying raspberry jam to his toast.

"It doesn't matter," Joren interrupted crisply. "You're right that you can't refuse a royal command, Zahir, and I suppose that it isn't too terrible that you're the king's squire."

"What do you mean?" Zahir's forehead furrowed as he bit into his toast, which was now covered with just the right amount of jam.

"I mean that when you are the king's squire, you get to spend a considerable amount of time with him," answered Joren between mouthfuls of scrambled eggs. "The more time that an individual spends with royalty, the more influence that being has over royalty. Think about it this way, Zahir: when the whore who pretended to be a man so she could earn her shield was his squire that was the start of Jonathan's liberal behavior. Perhaps a conservative squire could show him the errors in his ways, and inspire him to restore so many of the traditions that he has done away with."

"You know how they say Alanna got her influence over Jonathan," Zahir hissed. It required a tremendous exercise of willpower not to shout when the blood was roaring in his ears and pounding through his veins, but he managed to keep his tone low. After all, this wasn't the kind of conversation that he wanted anyone to overhear. "I'm not going to sleep with my knightmaster, Joren. That's completely disgusting and immoral on just about every level I can imagine, and, besides, among the Bazhir, people who sleep with members of the same sex are stoned."

"I'm not telling you to sleep with him." Joren rolled his eyes. "I couldn't bear to be friends with you if you did. All I am asking is that you do the best you can to influence him with your words. All I want is for you to show him that there really is an alternative lifestyle to a rabidly progressive one."

"I doubt I'll be able to make him change his mind on anything." Zahir shook his head. "All of his friends are progressives, and so is his wife. He loves Thayet, and he's known his friends since childhood. I will never be able to usurp them. They will always have far more sway on the king then I will."

"Just try to balance them out," insisted Joren earnestly. "Just promise me that you won't let the king turn you into a progressive. Just swear to me that you won't forget who you are and what you stand for."

"I am a Bazhir chief." Zahir lifted his nose haughtily. "I represent my people, and I have been taught since birth how to conduct myself with dignity and honor. I will always remember who I am just as my heart will always remember to beat."

Despite his supercilious comment, Zahir wasn't confident that he knew who he was. It was hard to have a clear image of who he was and what he embodied when, everyday, he changed something about himself or contradicted himself, and consoled himself by calling it growth. In a way, every day, he suffocated himself only to undergo an agonizing rebirth the next day. In the end, Zahir feared that there would be nothing left of himself. Instead, there would only be a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass.

At the moment, his particular quandary was what constituted ethical conduct in his relationship with his knightmaster. Zahir knew that his first loyalty should be to the king, and not to his friends. Yet, he told himself that it wasn't wrong to make sure that, whenever possible, he showed King Jonathan what it really meant to have a more conservative worldview. All he was doing was expressing his beliefs, and that wasn't a crime. If his beliefs happened to influence his knightmaster, that was all for the good…but that was hardly Zahir's intent. There was nothing underhanded about being true to himself. Remaining as dedicated to his beliefs as he could was, if anything, something that both progressives and conservatives could admire him for.

Still, as he munched on his cold eggs, Zahir couldn't help but feel as though he had betrayed himself by not refusing Joren entirely.

"Mithros, life was much less confusing before I was chosen as the king's squire," he grumbled.

"My life will be getting complicated soon enough," Joren stated, casually sipping his juice. "Sir Paxton and I will be leaving to patrol the Gallan border tomorrow at dawn."

"I can help you pack," offered Zahir, as he finished his eggs.

"That would be immensely appreciated." Joren smiled, as he and Zahir picked up their trays and returned them to the kitchen, leaving Garvey and Vinson to finish their breakfasts together. "Garvey and Vinson offered to help, but I told them they should spend the day on the practice courts, instead, so that Sir Jerel and that Rosemark knight can see them in action."

"Sir Jerel and the Rosemark knight can't ask Garvey and Vinson to be their squires unless Garvey and Vinson make themselves available," agreed Zahir, as they exited the mess hall and headed toward Sir Paxton's quarters. "Anyway, the more they are seen, the less likely they are to be forgotten."

"Exactly." Joren nodded, and, after that, the two of them lapsed into silence.

Neither of them spoke when they entered Joren's room and began placing folded clothes and supplies into Joren's satchels. For the next hour, they worked quietly. Once they were done packing, Zahir asked, "You sure that you have a week's worth of tunics and breeches? Clothes don't get washed as quickly along the border as they do at the palace."

"I'm sure I do," responded Joren. "Not that you would know anything about life along the border."

"I know about life in the desert, and how you have to wait until the tribe reaches an oasis before women can do the laundry," Zahir volleyed back. Then, continuing with his checklist of supplies, he inquired, "Do you have three sets of nightclothes, and one outfit you can wear to any important banquets the Gallans you will be fighting might invite you to attend?"

"Of course." Joren snorted. "I also have undergarments, armor, the weapons I won't be wearing, some pens and parchment to write to my ever-anxious mother, and some books to read in case I get bored."

Before Zahir could reply, a gleam sparkled in Joren's eyes, as he fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a bag of dried fruit. Popping one piece of fruit into his mouth and tossing another at his companion, he added, "I have a snack for the journey, too."

"You'd better not eat all of it before your journey," teased Zahir, watching as Joren devoured another slice of dried fruit.

"Don't give me a lecture on conserving supplies." Joren wrinkled his nose.

"I suppose that's what you have a knightmaster for."

"That's right," declared Joren. "I have friends to amuse me, and a knightmaster to bore me."

The two of them grinned at each other for a moment. It was the last minute that they had together before Joren went on border patrol, because, a second later, their conversation was interrupted by Sir Paxton calling for Joren to polish his armor. They didn't even have time for a "good-bye" or a "see you later" before Joren had rushed off to attend to his knightmaster.

Good-byes are stupid because they never say all that you want them to, Zahir observed inwardly as he left Joren's room and made his way back to his own. It was hard not to feel frustrated by this good-bye. After all, Joren was preparing to ride off on adventures while Zahir would be stuck here at the Royal Palace, serving at royal meals and spending a few hours a day on the practice courts with the king if he was lucky. After four years of page training, Zahir craved more action than that, and he was skilled at the fighting arts. There was no reason why he shouldn't be joining Joren on the front lines…

Yet, His Majesty had decided that Zahir was more useful elsewhere. Zahir was nothing more than a servant to the Crown. It was his duty to serve wherever the king determined that he would be most effective, even if he disagreed with King Jonathan's choice.

It wasn't his place to be discontent, Zahir chided himself severely as he entered his room and flopped onto his bed. It wasn't his place to question orders. It was his place to be obedient and to be happy that he could serve the realm in any capacity at all, even if that capacity wasn't as exhilarating as he had envisioned it would be.

Still, he couldn't stop the mutinous elements in himself from being discontent with his position as the king's squire, and, any time he had an opportunity to think, his mind would inevitably return to the burning question of why King Jonathan had wanted him as a squire, anyway.

His disaffection with his situation only mounted as the week progressed, and he was forced to watch all of his year-mates ride off with their new knightmasters. After Joren, Cleon of Kennan departed with Inness of Mindelan, and, the day after that, Roald left with Lord Imrah and Garvey with Sir Jeral. Then, two days after Roald and Gravey disappeared, Vinson vanished with the Rosemark knight. After that, Zahir had nobody in the palace to seek out during his free time, and, every time one of his year-mates departed, they rubbed salt in the wound that Joren's leaving had created.

As much as he tried to control his resentment, Zahir couldn't stop feeling that it was unjust for him to be trapped at the palace while his peers went out to have adventures. It wasn't fair that he was doomed to stay still while they all moved forward.

Sometimes, he wondered if the king noticed his bitterness, but if Jonathan detected anything, the king never mentioned it. In the end, Zahir concluded that, since he had made no overt display of discontent, his knightmaster must not have realized anything. After all, King Jonathan had a country to rule. He didn't have time to concern himself with the emotional state of his squire.

Zahir didn't know how long his resentment might have simmered inside him if he hadn't received a letter from his cousin Nadir that caused his temper to finally boil over, and all the pent up fury he had built up over the days of watching his peers leave burst out of him with all the sudden, impersonal destruction of a flash flood.

As long as he lived, Zahir would never forget opening that note from Nadir. The contents of that horrible letter would be sealed in his memory until the moment he died, and the awful words the note contained were only rendered more terrible by the excitement that had initially whirled inside Zahir when Nadir's letter was delivered. Since he had no friends left at the palace, Zahir had been delighted to receive a note from his cousin, but all that changed the instant he started to read:

_Dear Zahir, _

_I hope that this letter finds you in good health. I know that this report doesn't coincide with our schedule of monthly reports on the status of your tribe, but I thought that the situation was pressing enough to inform you of it as soon as possible. _

_If it is any consolation, the emergency is not something like a dreadful disease tearing through the tribe, but I'm afraid that any relief you will feel at that thought will be mitigated when I tell you that your sister Aisha has disappeared. Your mother woke up yesterday morning to discover that Aisha wasn't in your family tent. At first, your mother wasn't worried, since your spirited sister has a habit of taking morning rides. However, as noon approached, your mother started to get concerned, and she sent your brother-in-law, Hassan, out to fetch Aisha. _

_Unfortunately, after two hours of searching, Hassan was unable to find Aisha, and he returned to collect more tribesmen to look for her. They searched until after dark, and found nothing. _

_I will be leading another search today, and will do so until Aisha is recovered or until you order us to give up the search. However, I admit that I am not hopeful of finding her, because she seems to have faded into the desert. _

_I'd write more if I didn't have to lead the search party out now. Please know that my prayers are with you and your sister. _

_Your loyal cousin, _

_Nadir ibn Kamal _

Staring down at the letter, and feeling the tears trickle down his cheeks, Zahir longed to tear the parchment to shreds. He desired to wipe away every word written on the parchment with the salty rivulets streaming down his face. He wanted to expunge every dreadful lie that the note told from the history of civilization, but he couldn't do that. He couldn't do that, because, somewhere deep inside him, he realized that the words were true.

Aisha, his beautiful, vivacious, and headstrong sister was dead. There was no hope of finding anything more than her corpse in the desert. Nobody could survive alone in the desert. They would die of thirst before they reached an oasis, be killed by the poisonous bite of a viper, or freeze to death in the harsh, unexpected cold of a desert night.

Abruptly, he hated his desert home with a wrath that blinded him, because the desert killed everything. It had murdered his little sister. Never again would he see her toss her shimmering hair over her shoulders as she laughed. Never again would he see her eyes narrow with anger as he teased her. Never again would he see them glisten as she taunted him. Never again would he ride his horse against the wind alongside her. Never again would he have to scold her for neglecting to wear her veil. Never again would she wake him up too early in the mornings. He would never get to see her marry a Bazhir man and finally settle down. He would never get to bounce her children on his knee.

The Black God knew that he might never even have a chance to have the right prayers said over her body. After all, the desert wasn't merciful with the lives it took. Anyone who died in the desert would rot rapidly in the blazing sun, and the rotting would attract the snakes and vultures that could devour a body in hours at most. The bones that remained after the scavengers consumed all the flesh would be swallowed by the sand, and there would be no evidence of the desert's murder.

He didn't know how long he sat on his bed, sobbing into his palms, before a servant girl, Myra Jenkins, glided into his room. Over the past few days, Zahir had noticed that Myra didn't seem to have any problems with his ethnicity, since she enjoyed winking at him and addressing him in an almost obnoxiously lilting manner as she did now.

"Zahir, you haven't come out for supper like you normally do," she crooned, as she wafted over to him, bearing a tray filled with soup, bread, and water. "Are you sick?"

"What ails me is nothing a healer or anyone else can cure," snapped Zahir, thinking that the only thing that could possibly heal him was seeing his lively sister alive.

"Ah, so it's not an illness," Myra murmured while she put the tray down on Zahir's nightstand. "It's just you being moody. You should eat your super like a good boy. That will make you feel better."

"Food isn't going to make anything better." Some savage instinct inside Zahir seized his arm and caused it to fling the tray onto the floor, so that the food spattered Myra's dress. As Myra shrieked, the savage element inside him felt vindicated. In his mind, Myra had come to represent the desert, and the desert had to be punished. It had to be crushed. It had to be shown that if it destroyed Aisha, Zahir would destroy it in revenge. Before he could even think about what he was doing, Zahir's fist had pounded into Myra's nose. "And I'm not just being moody, either."

"You monster!" Myra screamed, launching a wild punch at his face. Reflexively, he ducked even though the blow probably wouldn't have connected, and she took advantage of the opportunity to flee from his room.

Watching her run out of his room, and seeing the door slam shut in her wake, Zahir felt only satisfaction. He had wounded someone else now. He alone wasn't in pain. He hadn't gotten rid off the anguish inside him, but he had at least shared the misery.


	3. Chapter 3

Pride Comes Before a Fall

After Myra fled from his bedchamber, Zahir was alone. Once he was by himself, his room was as silent as death. That comforted him slightly, because anything that was reminiscent of death connected him with his lost sister.

He didn't know how long he sat numbly on his bed before the solitude that had brought him a temporary respite from his agony was interrupted by his door being slammed open.

Incuriously, not particularly caring about anyone who was alive at the moment, Zahir tilted his head to discover who had intruded on his grief. When he realized that it was the king who was standing as though chiseled from ice in the doorway, he couldn't muster up any real emotion.

Vaguely, he recognized that he should be cowering from King Jonathan's face, which was as hard as granite, and cringing from his blue eyes, which were blazing like the hottest part of a flame. However, he didn't care about the wrath of the most powerful man in the realm right now, because the king had no power over him any more.

After all, he didn't have to fear what punishment his infuriated knightmaster could inflict upon him when he no longer cared about what happened to him now that Aisha was dead. If he was reprimanded, he would barely register the words, nonetheless be wounded by them. If he was thrashed, he wouldn't feel the blows, and, even if he did, he would perceive them as a light, insufficient penalty for being alive when his vivacious little sister wasn't. Even if he was killed, he would experience only a faint surge of hope at the prospect of being reunited with Aisha in the afterlife.

Now that Aisha was swallowed whole by the desert, Zahir had nothing left to lose, and there was nothing more terrifying than someone with nothing left to lose. Someone with nothing left to lose could not be punished or intimidated into obedience. Someone with nothing left to lose had nothing left to fear from any authority figure. Someone with nothing left to lose wasn't openly rebellious, because somebody in that position didn't care about anything enough to do that, but such a person was indifferent to authority and that was enough of a threat.

"Myra says you slapped her." King Jonathan's voice shook with barely controlled rage.

Strictly speaking, this did not call for a response, since it was a comment and not a question, so Zahir offered none. There was no profit for him in speaking. If he didn't care about being punished, there was no point in attempting to defend his actions to attempt to lessen his sentence, and denying what he had done would just be stupid under the circumstances.

His lack of a reply seemed to raise the king's ire all the more, because his knightmaster snapped, "This is a serious matter, Zahir ibn Alhaz, and I demand an answer from you at once."

"I did hit the serving girl," announced Zahir flatly. He knew he should have felt ashamed at attacking an innocent teenaged girl who had only been trying to comfort him. He knew he had no business taking out his fury and pain on somebody who had done him no injury. Yet, despite recognizing those things, he couldn't bring himself to feel remorse for what he had done to Myra. The helpless rage and infinite despair he felt at Aisha's death overwhelmed any other emotions he might otherwise have possessed.

Seeing crimson flare on King Jonathan's crimson cheeks, Zahir thought that his knightmaster might explode at his unabashed answer. Instead, the man jabbed a trembling finger at the food that had spilled on the floor when Zahir had knocked over the supper tray.

"Clean that up now," King Jonathan ordered in a voice cold enough to freeze his squire's blood.

"It's women's work," Zahir protested automatically, his face flushing. No proper Bazhir male would ever stoop to doing female work.

"I didn't ask which gender you believed should be responsible for cleaning up the mess." King Jonathan's tone was sharp enough to slice diamonds. "I told you to clean this mess up immediately."

"I won't do women's work, Your Majesty," countered Zahir stiffly, lifting his arched nose.

"If you make a mess, especially if you do so deliberately, you will clean it up yourself and not expect anyone else to do so for you. If you don't appreciate the work the servants do for you, you can do the work yourself." His eyes burning into Zahir, King Jonathan folded his arms across his chest. "You are my subject and my squire, and you will do whatever I tell you to, even if you regard it as women's work."

Perfectly aware that he couldn't disobey a royal command no matter how insulting, Zahir didn't argue the point further, although he still couldn't bring himself to grab the towel beside his wash basin and being cleaning up the spilled meal. His pride prevented him from degrading himself in such a manner. A Bazhir chief did not grovel on the floor like a female servant.

"Clean up the mess," King Jonathan repeated. "Don't defy me any longer, Zahir. I'm not in the mood to tolerate disobedience from you, and I've had too much experience dealing with squires far more headstrong than you for you to win this argument."

No doubt he was referring to Alanna the Lioness, who was famous for her readiness to fight with her king. There was no way that Zahir, raised in a culture that greatly valued submission, could rival that woman who had no respect for obstinacy.

Bitterly, infuriated at being humiliated in such a fashion, Zahir snatched the towel from beside his wash basin and began soaking up the now cold soup with it.

"You only value traditions like obedience to your king and knightmaster when it is to your advantage," muttered Zahir through gritted teeth as he wrung out the towel into his wash basin. He suspected that the remark would irk King Jonathan more, but he didn't care. He had to prove that he might have been forced to do women's work, but he wasn't defeated. He was humbled, but he wasn't surrendering entirely.

"I trust that you will keep in mind that your recent behavior is far more censurable than mine when you are making your insolent under breath commentary," his knightmaster snapped. "Knights are supposed to treat women with chivalry. They are not intended to commit random acts of violence against women, and decent beings don't abuse their servants."

As he threw out the shards from the broken soup bowl, Zahir didn't answer, because he didn't know how he could do so. He did know that knights were supposed to protect―not hurt―women, and that honor dictated that he treat servants with respect. The problem was that knowing the right thing to do was so much easier than actually doing it.

When he provided no reply, King Jonathan sighed and shook his head. "Mithros, Roald told me that you had ceased your bullying behavior last year. If I had known that you hadn't, I might never have taken you as my squire."

"I did stop hazing the first-years last year, because I realized how childish a pursuit it was after my father died and I had to become chief of my tribe." As a general principle, Zahir hated revealing his inner thoughts and feelings to others, but, against his will, he found himself talking about them with the king now. It seemed like once his dignity had been shattered when he had been forced to do women's work, his pride decided that it might as well give in all the way, even if that meant humiliating him by describing to his knightmaster the sentiments he usually kept hidden. That had to be the only explanation for the fact that he continued, "I know that knights aren't supposed to hit women, and that it's wrong to use your strength to torment people weaker than you. I've been told what's right since I was a child. I know what I should do, but I don't always do it. Sometimes, I choose to do the wrong thing, and sometimes it is like there is no decision on my part involved at all. Sometimes, it's like a savage instinct seizes me and makes me do things I know are wrong. The worst part is that I know that savage impulse is me, and that I can't control it, because something inside me doesn't want to control that instinct." His cheeks ablaze, Zahir concluded, "I can understand if I don't want you to be your squire anymore, Your Majesty."

"I don't wish for you not to be my squire anymore," King Jonathan pronounced after a lengthy pause. "Besides, when I asked you to be my squire, I essentially made a promise that I would train you for the next four years. A teacher has no business giving up on a student just because the student does something to displease the teacher. Instead, the instructor has an obligation to guide the pupil onto the proper path."

Zahir didn't know whether he should be relieved that he wouldn't have to suffer the embarrassment of being dropped as squire by the king or disappointment that he was still going to be stuck at the palace while his peers rode out on adventures. Before he could figure out how he should feel, King Jonathan went on, "If you can't control yourself, I have no choice but to discipline you. Now, when you knocked over the tray, Myra's dress was ruined by the spilled food, so you can pay for her to get a replacement. Myra is at the healers' now, because you broke her nose when you hit her, but when she returns to work tomorrow, you will apologize to her."

"She's just a servant," Zahir mumbled defiantly. "I don't see why I have to lower myself to apologize to her."

"If you refuse to apologize when you have wronged somebody you perceive as being inferior to you, it is you, not the person you have wronged, who is diminished," King Jonathan educated him sternly.

"Your Majesty, I'll apologize to you for angering and disappointing you, but I won't apologize to her."

"You wronged Myra, not me." King Jonathan shook his head. "You'll apologize to her, not me."

"You're determined to humiliate me, aren't you, sire?" Zahir bit his lip.

"No." Again, the king shook his head. "You embarrassed yourself, Zahir, when you hit Myra. Acknowledging your error will not humiliate you further. Refusing to apologize for what you did would add to you disgrace, but saying you are sorry will not. If you do no admit that you were wrong, you ultimately will look more foolish than if you do."

Zahir hesitated for a moment, considering this. Then, he sighed. "I'll apologize to the girl, then."

"Good." His knightmaster's eyes locked on him. "And you will _never _attack a servant or a woman again. I assure you that I will not be so merciful the second time you lose control and assault someone."

"I understand, Your Majesty." Zahir nodded. He wasn't planning on attacking anyone like he had Myra. Then again, he hadn't been planning on assaulting Myra, either. The impulse to do so had just abruptly flared inside him, and he hadn't had the strength or the desire to resist it. He would have to find the strength and the desire to resist any more vicious urges that bloomed inside him. After all, his greatest evil didn't stem from planned cruelties, but rather from random ones.

"We have cured the symptoms, but not the root, of the problem, in that case." King Jonathan's tone softened slightly as he commented, "I am not without empathy, Squire. I know how difficult it can be to control your temper during the tumult of adolescence. However, you don't have a right to take out your anger, your pain, or your frustration out on others as you did on Myra. When you are upset, you should speak with someone you can trust, instead of resorting to physically or verbally attacking others. Even if that person can't advise you, just expressing your emotions will make you feel better and can help you organize your thoughts."

"Not everyone likes talking about their issues over tea and crumpets, sire." Scowling, Zahir thought that he preferred just about anything to discussing his emotions. "Some of us find talking about our feelings a degrading experience in itself."

"You do not have to speak with anyone about your problems if you can deal with them effectively by yourself by pausing to think before you act when you are in a temper, by writing about your feelings, or by hitting a pillow or practice dummy." King Jonathan arched his eyebrows. "Now, why don't you tell me what made you lose control today?"

"I thought you said that I didn't have to discuss what was bothering me with anybody if I didn't want to, Your Majesty," pointed out Zahir shortly. He wasn't going to talk about Aisha to anyone. Mentioning his beautiful, dead sister might very well reduce him to tears, and the king had already seen him too vulnerable already. It was best to think about Aisha only when he was alone. Crying alone was infinitely better than sobbing on someone's shoulder, because if you cried alone, nobody could prove that you had shed a tear.

"I said if you could handle your problems appropriately, you didn't have to discuss them with anyone," his knightmaster corrected him tartly. "Obviously, since you punched Myra in the face, you are incapable of doing that at the present."

Sticking out his chin and trying not to contemplate how Aisha had employed the same gesture that they had both inherited from their father whenever her legendary stubbornness was about to rear its ugly head again, Zahir answered, "With all due respect, I don't need your help, my liege."

"You do, but you are too proud to accept it, and that's why you assaulted Myra," responded King Jonathan dryly.

Not ready to speak Aisha's name aloud for fear that it would cause him to burst into tears because she would never reply to her name again, Zahir pressed his lips together.

When he remained silent, the king added, "I realize, Squire, that it is hard being stuck at the palace while all your peers are riding out, but―"

"I didn't hit Myra because I was annoyed at being trapped here while all my yearmates were riding off on adventures." Zahir bristled indignantly, because he was petty, but he wasn't that petty. "Yes, that aggravates me to no end, sire, but I'm not unbalanced enough to hit someone over that." Unable to find the words to describe what had happened to Aisha, and how what had happened to his sister emptied his heart of everything good and filled those vacant places with grief, fear, wrath, and hatred, he thrust the letter Nadir had sent him into King Jonathan's hands. "_That's_ why I hit Myra."

For several long minutes, there was silence as the king read Nadir's note, and then he said, "I'm very sorry that your sister has disappeared, Zahir―"

"Has died, you mean," interrupted Zahir grimly. "Nobody can survive all alone in the desert. You know that, sire. You know that's why some tribes that don't stone people who are found guilty of committing serious crimes release them naked and without any supplies into the desert for 'desert justice.' You know that the tribes that do that claim that they don't stone people because human judgments are fallible, and so it is better to leave it to the desert to pass the final sentence. You know that they call it a mercy, even though it is really just a mercy they grant themselves to avoid bloodying their palms. You know that everyone who receives desert justice dies."

Here, Zahir offered a wild, humorless laugh that sounded more like a hysterical wail to his own ears. "Desert justice. There's no such thing as desert justice. Pretending that the desert is capable of being just is to act like the desert is human, and to act like the desert is human is to risk getting yourself killed. If you start believing that you can outsmart, trust, overpower, befriend, deceive, or bargain with the desert, you die. You die not because the desert kills you, but because the desert is what it is, and nothing can ever alter that. The desert doesn't _do _anything. It's just a place where things struggle to live, and all of them die in the end, even if they are pretty, strong, stubborn, and spirited. Nobody can ever win against the desert. The desert eats everyone up without even trying."

"Zahir." King Jonathan's hand clasped his shoulder. "Your sister was raised in the desert. She knows where all the oasises can be found. She has a horse to transport her, and that drains her of less energy. She may have food in her saddle bags. She has clothes to protect her from the cold nights, and she knows where there are cliffs under which she can find shelter in sandstorms."

"If she were alive, she would have found her way back to our tribe by now, or else the searchers from our tribe would have found her already." Zahir shook his head. He wasn't going to start hoping that the king was right. That would only cause him worse pain as the days went by and Aisha wasn't recovered. "I'll tell Nadir to continue to search for a week, and then to give up on her. Of course, by that time, even her bones will have been swallowed up by the sand, and she will be denied a proper burial."

"If she has died, her soul will go onto the Divine Realms whether or not she receives a proper burial." The king's grip on Zahir's shoulder tightened. "Proper burial rites are more for the benefit of the living than the dead. The dead are past caring what happens to their bodies."

Zahir didn't know how to answer that, because, logically, he knew that was true. Certainly, he had seen enough corpses to realize that the dead didn't process what was going on around them, and definitely did not have any preferences about what fate befell the empty shell that had once housed their soul. Once the soul departed, the body ceased to care about anything.

Spiritually, Zahir still felt that a proper burial mattered. Somehow, he still believed that an element of a person soul demanded a proper burial, and if that requirement went unfulfilled, the person's soul would be trapped in the human realms, where it would haunt people until it had received some satisfaction.

Oh, Zahir definitely believed in ghosts, as stupid as that belief sounded, because his little sister was haunting him. Memories of her didn't just flood his brain and heart. No, he also had the peculiar sense that he was watching him and judging him. Worse still, he had the disconcerting realization that he was disappointing his younger sister, since he knew that she would be cross at him for punching Myra…In fact, she would probably slap him herself if she were here.

Yet, she wasn't here, and she would never be with him again. She was dead, but she couldn't be allowed to die completely. She was too wonderful to be permitted to just pass from this existence while she was still so young and had so much left to give to others. Somehow, she must live on, and the only way for her to live on was to carry on through him. Now that Aisha was gone, Zahir was going to have to honor her memory by incorporating elements of her into himself. As long as he let her live through him, she would never really be dead.

Pulling out of King Jonathan's grasp, Zahir said, "With Your Majesty's permission, I would like to go to the healers'. I want to apologize to Myra sooner rather than later."

After all, Myra might very well have been someone's sister, and been as special to somebody else as Aisha was to him. In her own way, Myra must have been a person as complex as Aisha, and that meant that he owed her his respect. When he looked at her and all women, he would have to remember to see his sister, and then he wouldn't be a brute.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: This chapter is short, and I apologize for that, but college started again today. Since I don't know how busy I will be soon, I figured that I would post this section, and not keep you guys waiting until I had more done.

Distractions

As Zahir arrived outside the healers' ward, the door swung open, and, the very person who was dreading to see because he didn't have a clue how to begin what promised to be a very awkward discussion with her, strode out. It turned out that Myra was even less pleased to see him if the way she leapt back into the healers' ward as though the hallway floor had scorched her feet was any indication.

"Don't be scared," he told her, wishing that the manner in which she cringed from him didn't make him flush. At least, he consoled himself, his humiliation wasn't obvious, as his dark skin did a wonderful job of concealing his blush. That was one of the few advantages of not being white like the average Tortallan. "I—I'm not going to hit you again."

Unfortunately, Myra didn't look particularly reassured by this declaration.

"What do you want with me?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Why are you here?"

"I've come to apologize to you," replied Zahir with as much dignity as he could muster. "Now, would you please step out into the corridor? You're blocking the door."

"You've come to apologize to me," Myra repeated, her eyes contracting further and her tone skeptical. Despite her clear dubiousness, she did step out of the healers' ward, although she was careful to stand as far away from him as she could with her spine pressed against the stone wall.

"You don't need to bother with that cowering from me," Zahir said, not realizing until the words had left his mouth how offensive they were. "You may think that you are out of my reach there, but you aren't. I can move faster than you. If I wanted to hit you, I could easily do it while you're standing there."

"That doesn't sound like an apology to me," snapped Myra.

"I'm sorry I slapped you," Zahir choked out, the apology sticking in his throat because he was unaccustomed to humbling himself and admitting any sort of error.

He hoped that Myra would accept his apology immediately, thereby freeing him from any moral obligation to make himself look any weaker by examining any more of his flaws in his head, or worse, aloud.

However, Myra didn't seem to be in the mood for mercy, for she asked icily, "Is that all you have to say to me?"

"You're a servant," Zahir spat, glaring down his nose at her. He knew that he had been wrong to attack her, and that knowledge made him hate her more. It was far easier to keep being cruel to her than to attempt to atone for his abusing her. "You're lucky to be getting an apology at all."

"An apology does me no good if it isn't genuine," snorted Myra. "If you don't feel any remorse for assaulting me, you can leave me alone now. I don't want to deal with any more fake apologies from you just because the king forced you to say you're sorry to me."

For a second, Zahir was tempted to spin on his heel and stalk off to spare himself further embarrassment. However, he remained motionless when he thought about his sisters, Aisha and Laila, and how he would probably have to fight the urge to murder any man who laid so much as a finger on either of them, not that anyone would ever be able to touch Aisha again at all. If he regarded his sisters' bodies as sacred, how could he not respect other women in the same way? After all, every female was someone's mother, sister, or daughter.

"My apology was genuine," he insisted after a moment's hesitation. "It only sounded stiff because I'm not used to saying I'm sorry, especially to those beneath me. It was wrong of me to hit you when you were only trying to help me, and I hope that one day you will be able to forgive me for my unwarranted violence against you."

"You broke my nose." Myra's amber eyes jabbed into his chest like a knife. "Thanks to you, it will always be a little off center now. Do you reckon that words can really compensate for that?"

"Your nose is pretty," Zahir reassured her automatically. Studying her face, though, he discovered that the words were actually true. Even though her nose was crimson still from his punch, it was small and delicate.

"Just yesterday I probably would have fainted if you said that to me." Myra chuckled bitterly. "I was attracted to you, then, but now I'm not. Now, I know that your good looks hide a brute. Since I realize that, flattery won't make up for my off-center nose, either."

"I'm not a brute," protested Zahir, stung. "For your information, I just received a letter from my cousin telling me that my sister has disappeared into the desert, which basically means that she is dead. I'm mourning her, and grieving people do all sorts of crazy things."

"Grief doesn't take away your responsibility for your actions." Myra scrutinized him, and, to his astonishment, Zahir found that he was waiting with bated breath for her to carry on. For some reason, having her absolution mattered to him a great deal, even though she was an insignificant servant whose opinion should have meant nothing more to him than a slug's.

"I was offering an explanation, not an excuse," Zahir countered crisply, trying to block out Wyldon's voice in his head, which coldly informed him that explanations were, by definition, excuses.

"Humph." Again, Myra snorted, but, after a moment that felt far longer than that to Zahir, she relented. "Well, since you were out of your mind with grief for your sister, I suppose that I can forgive you just this once."

"Thank you." Zahir wished that the words didn't sound like they had been ripped from him without his consent.

"Just bear in mind that I'm far more merciful than you," Myra finished, her eyes shooting into him like arrows. "That makes me superior to you in at least one way."

"I wish you had been the one to die in the desert." Zahir glowered at her.

"I don't have to forgive you for that remark," retorted Myra, meeting his eyes boldly.

Wrong-footed that a female servant would be so audacious, Zahir pivoted, turning his back on her and beginning to stride back to his quarters. As he did do, he tossed over his shoulder, "Since I am a generous man, I will pay to have your dress replaced. When you've figured out how much that will cost, you can ask me for the money. Whatever the price, I'm sure it will be nothing to me."

"It's not generosity if the king is making you pay," observed Myra sharply, and Zahir thought he saw her roll her eyes. "It's a fine."

"Then I'll be generous and tell you that if you ever need to defend yourself against a man, you should aim below the belt if you take my meaning," Zahir responded tersely, wondering why in the name of all that was holy he was wasting his precious time proving to a worthless maid that she wasn't morally superior to him.

"I know that already," scoffed Myra. "I have brothers, you know, and that's one of the few things growing up with brothers will teach you."

"Liar," Zahir smirked at her. "If you already were aware of where to hit a male, you would have done it to me when I slapped you."

"Not necessarily." Myra idly twirled a tendril of strawberry blonde hair that had slipped out of her bun around her finger. "Just because you know how to fight, that doesn't mean that you should always employ your knowledge. Maybe if you realized that, you wouldn't have been forced to lower yourself enough to apologize to me."

"How did you learn to be so bold?" Zahir mumbled, gaping at her. He hadn't intended to voice his astonished thoughts aloud, but, in the end, his tongue couldn't resist the temptation when his brain was too preoccupied with trying to make sense of this confident maid to control his errant tongue.

"If you are a girl with three older brothers, you learn to be bold if you want to survive your childhood." Myra's eyes gleamed at him, and Zahir, numbly, noted that the hostile barrier between them seemed to have crumbled slightly. "Brothers don't teach you much, but they do teach you how to be bold."

"If you were so bold, you would have defended yourself better earlier," Zahir argued. "If you were so bold, you would have no qualms about hitting below the belt when necessary."

"Don't assume that I'd act the same as you would in any given situation," warned Myra, shaking her head. "Remember that I'm more merciful than you."

"You certainly aren't more modest." Determined to emerge the victor from their verbal sparring match with that final comment, Zahir rounded the corner before she could answer and hurried back to his chamber.

As he headed back to his bedroom, he was amazed to discover that he couldn't get the image of Myra's tiny, scarlet nose, her accusing amber eyes, or her strawberry blonde hair glittering first yellow and then red in the candlelight as she twisted it around her finger, out of his mind.

What in all the Eastern Lands was wrong with him? Was he really lusting after a non-Bazhir woman? No, he couldn't possibly be. No Bazhir chief could contaminate his lineage by marrying or even just sleeping with someone not of his race. Any liaisons with non-Bazhir were prohibited unless he wanted to betray his tribe and destroy his honor, which was more important than his life. No non-Bazhir woman was worth more than his honor, especially not a stupid serving girl.

A serving girl was so far beneath him that she wouldn't have even been worth lusting after if she were Bazhir, Zahir reminded himself severely. It was Zahir's duty to his tribe to strengthen it by wedding the daughter of a Bazhir chief, such as Nasira bint Mahmud, who was at least a hundred times more attractive than Myra, anyway.

The only reason he had experienced a brief twinge of desire for an ugly, meaningless servant girl like Myra, he reasoned as he donned his nightclothes and slid beneath his covers, was because she was so bold and immodest it was impossible for a man not to be ensnared by her sinfulness.

Nothing but chaos results when women walk about without veils and servants think they are equal to their masters, Zahir concluded furiously, pummeling his pillow, and wishing fervently that he was back in the desert, where the natural order of the world was maintained as it wasn't in Corus.

His attraction to Myra, though, made it plain that he required a distraction, because he was clearly going crazy from the lack of activity in his life. Tomorrow, he would need to persuade King Jonathan of that. Perhaps he could use the fact that he was in grief and the fact that he had slapped a servant for no reason to convince the king of just how desperate the situation was…

The next morning, after a practice sword bout with his knightmaster, Zahir mentally reviewed all of his arguments for needing a distraction, and then said, "Your Majesty, may I speak with you for a moment?"

"As long as it really is a moment," King Jonathan answered. "I'm afraid my prime minister wants me to re-read a considerable amount of documents before today's council meeting."

In the interests of brevity, Zahir decided not to mention that having to re-read mountains of paperwork yourself seemed to negate the point of having a prime minister in the first place, and, instead he just began his begging for a distraction as tactfully as he could by announcing, "It's an honor to be your squire, my liege, but it also can get boring sometimes. I think I would be able to control my temper and handle my grief better if I felt like I was being more useful."

"You're useful where you are." While Zahir battled to conceal his aggravation at another cryptic allusion to the enigma surrounding his knightmaster's decision to violate tradition by taking him as a squire in the first place, King Jonathan went on smoothly, "However, I believe that I can come up with a task to fill your days more if that's your wish."

"It is, Your Majesty." Zahir nodded fervidly. At his current level of desperation for a distraction, even having latrine duty would feel like a blessing. "It would be a pleasure and an honor to do any task you assigned me."

King Jonathan paused to scan Zahir from top to toe and then he stated, "You are quite a horseman."

"I've been riding since before I could walk, sire." Zahir didn't care if he sounded arrogant. He wasn't going to be shy about his skills. After all the effort he had poured into developing them, it made sense to take pride in them.

Nodding, the king educated him, "The Queen's Riders are always looking for skilled horsemen to instruct their trainees. You may fill your free time helping with the trainees."

"The queen won't mind if I do?" Zahir asked, trying to keep the dubiousness out of his tone.

"My wife has always admired the riding skills of the Bazhir," King Jonathan informed him. "She has often wished that more of your people would join the Riders, so she would be happy to have you."

"Oh." That was all Zahir could think to say. He didn't have a clue how to teach anyone how to ride or do anything else for that matter. Sure, he could ride swifter than the wind and could control Sufia as though she were an extension of himself, but that didn't mean that he was qualified to instruct someone in the art of riding. Just because you could do something well yourself, that didn't make you a good teacher, or so he supposed. After all, the problem with the king's plan was that he knew less about teaching than he did about advanced mathematics."Do I have to help with the trainees?"

"No, it's your choice." King Jonathan shook his head. Eying his squire seriously, he added, "If you decide to help, though, you will refrain from making any biting comments to the female trainees or any of the female Riders about their chosen careers. You may disagree with the career they have picked for themselves, but you will treat them with the same respect as you would a male in the same position."

"Understood, Your Majesty," mumbled Zahir dully, noting inwardly that here was another marvelous reason not to waste his time attempting to teach Rider trainees.

Obviously detecting the implications of his tone, his knightmaster advised him gently, "Zahir, I think you should carefully consider working with the trainees. They could learn a lot from you, and you could learn much from them."

"I thought that I was supposed to be teaching them, not learning from them," pointed out a scowling Zahir.

"Anyone who has ever taught knows that it is impossible to teach without learning at the same time." King Jonathan flashed a quick grin.

Suspecting that this was just some sentimental nonsense concocted to convince him to waste his time with whiny trainees, Zahir arched an eyebrow and pressed, "What did you learn from teaching me, sire?"

"I've learned that, however much you might want to, you probably shouldn't hit someone for slapping somebody else for fear of looking like a hypocritical fool," King Jonathan answered, and Zahir determined that he had been justly punished for his almost impertinent question.

"You wanted to strike me?" Zahir blinked, because he hadn't recognized that he had angered the king that much.

"With your stubborn inability to see or admit that you were wrong last night, I think most beings would have wanted to hit you." King Jonathan's hand squeezed his shoulder for a second. "I'm glad that I didn't slap you for more reasons than just my desire not to appear like a hypocritical fool, though." Before Zahir could unscramble his tangled thoughts enough to devise a decent reply, his knightmaster added,"We should return to our quarters. I have important documents to read, and you have your own business to attend to."

When Zahir returned to his room, he found Myra there, singing in a shrilly and off key as she opened his windows.

"Don't do that," he snarled at her, shutting the door behind him. "If I want my room aired out, I'll open the windows myself, and, when you are in here, you'll go about your work quietly. I don't want to go deaf listening to you butchering ballads."

"I'm sorry we can't all go about our duties as cheerlessly as you do." Myra slammed his windows closed so forcefully that Zahir feared the panes would shatter. "I'm sorry that we can't all be as miserable as you."

"You can't have been very happy if you let me wreck your mood," retorted Zahir, yanking a pair of breeches and a shirt out of his dresser so he could change out of his sweaty practice clothes.

"And you can't be very happy if you want to ruin anyone's mood," Myra volleyed back.

"My sister just died," he fired back. "Why in the name of all that is holy would I be happy right now? Now, would you mind letting me change in peace?"

"I wouldn't mind doing anything that gave me an excuse to be away from you, and, speaking of clothes, you should know that it will cost ten golden crowns to replace the dress," huffed Myra, slamming the door as she stormed out of his bedroom.

Watching her leave, Zahir decided that he would spend time teaching the trainees, after all, since at least it would give him an excuse to be away from the royal quarters where he kept crossing paths with Myra, who had a knack for getting on his nerves faster than anyone he had ever met.


	5. Chapter 5

Surprises

"You're saddling your pony incorrectly," Zahir coldly informed a lanky male Rider trainee. He was overseeing a basic training session the next afternoon, and Sarge, a powerfully built man with skin darker even than Zahir's who appeared to be in charge of teaching the trainees, had told him not to be shy about correcting the trainees. Personally, Zahir took this as an indication of how much Sarge didn't know about Zahir, since Zahir wasn't timid. If anything, his arrogant demeanor was somewhat off-putting. "Before swinging the saddle up and over the pony's back, you have to place the right stirrup and cinch over the seat so that they don't hit and startle your mount."

"What would you know about saddling a pony?" scoffed the trainee Zahir had corrected, pivoting to rivet a steely gray glare upon the Bazhir teenager.

"I'm the king's squire," Zahir replied icily, arching his eyebrows. "Do you honestly think that His Majesty would choose a squire who couldn't even saddle a pony?"

"According to palace gossip, you only just became the king's squire—and if you ask me, you only became his squire because of your heritage since giving someone of your ethnicity that position is a convenient way of proving how diverse Tortall is—which makes you a year younger than me," snorted the trainee, and Zahir thought that the other adolescent was ugly. Not only did his long arms and legs give the other boy an air of ungainliness, but the dark red curls seemed to highlight the trainee's mercurial temper, and the freckles spattered all over the other lad's pale nose and cheeks made his face appear harsh. "That makes you two years younger than me. Why should I listen to you? What makes you think that you're right and I'm wrong?"

"You should listen to me, because I've been riding since before I could walk," Zahir answered, shooting the older trainee a withering glance. "On the other hand, based on your inability to even saddle a pony properly, I have to question whether you have ever even encountered any four-legged animals before."

"You're a fool if you believe that you can do anything I can't," sneered the redhead, his stormy gray eyes narrowing.

"You're the true idiot since you refuse to listen to someone who obviously knows more than you do." Zahir shrugged indifferently. "Of course, you don't have to take my advice if you don't want to. I don't particularly care. After all, it's your brain—assuming you have one, even though the evidence seems to contradict that—that will be bashed in if you startle a pony one day and that pony ends up kicking your head."

"Your people are primitives who just ride bareback." The redhead rolled his eyes. "You wouldn't recognize a saddle if someone wrapped it around you."

"My people can ride in saddles and bareback," countered Zahir, his spine stiffening. "Before we learn to ride bareback, we have to learn how to ride with a saddle, because riding with a saddle is easier than riding bareback. If anything, it is more primitive to rely on a saddle."

Before the red-haired trainee could respond with anything else that would make the blood boil in Zahir's veins, an affable voice called from behind him, "Don't mind Brayden. He doesn't care for anyone with skin darker than his own corpse-colored kind. When his skin gets tan from being out in the sun, he probably has to treat himself condescendingly, too."

Spinning on his heel, Zahir saw that the speaker was a short girl with unruly auburn hair that fell to her shoulders who was wearing a crooked smile which revealed her rather oversized front teeth. Reflexively, since he had made a policy of ignoring the female trainees so that he wouldn't disobey his knightmaster's order to not make any nasty comments about any girl's decision to join the Riders, Zahir averted his eyes and began looking around for a male trainee he could correct.

"Don't go away," she continued, clasping his wrist, and Zahir had to stifle the impulse to yank himself out of her grasp. Among the Bazhir, no girl would ever touch a strange man so familiarly. Of course, among the Bazhir, no girl would have been wearing breeches so she could ride like a man and not ride sidesaddle. Also, among the Bazhir, no respectable female would leave her tent without a veil to hide her face, and Zahir suspected that this Rider girl would never follow that edict. "You seem to know a lot about all this equestrian stuff, and I'm hopeless at it."

"If you're hopeless at it, why are you trying to become a Rider?" he asked, reasoning that posing an inquiry questioning a female's decision to join the Riders wasn't the same as making biting remarks about that career choice.

"I want to save people and go on adventures," the girl replied, her grin only broadening. "I may not be good at all this riding stuff, but I'm determined to become good at it."

"It's easier to devote your life to something you're naturally skilled at, instead of something that you have to work at," Zahir pointed out.

"It's no fun doing what's easiest, though." The girl wrinkled her nose. "I'd rather have the excitement of overcoming challenges than be bored because I never had the courage to push myself."

"Well, it's great to engage in a philosophical discussion, but I have trainees to teach…" Zahir began, turning to go help any male trainee he could, but he was halted when the girl's grip on his wrist tightened.

"Don't leave," she ordered, as Zahir pulled himself free of her clutches. "I need you to help me become good at this riding stuff."

"What do you want me to teach you?" Zahir inquired irritably.

Apparently oblivious to his growing hostility, the girl chirped, "I need you to help me saddle my pony. Sarge has already shown me how to do it four times, and he'll probably kill me if he has to help me again, so I need you to assist me, because I don't have a clue what I'm doing."

"Why should I waste time helping you when it's obvious you don't learn?" Zahir raised an eyebrow at her.

"I was hoping that you would remember that someone had to teach you how to saddle a mount, how to get on it, and how to ride it," the girl answered, her tone steady. "I was hoping that you would keep in mind how long it must have taken you to learn those skills, and that you would take pity on me when you consider the fact that I am from a family of fishers, so I have never encountered horses or ponies before I joined the Riders. I hoped that you would remember that not everyone has enjoyed a childhood among the Bazhir where they learned to ride when they were toddlers."

"Humph," Zahir grunted. Then, seeing there was no polite way to refuse her request, he snatched up the blanket that was supposed to go under her pony's saddle and thrust it into her hands, commanding in a brusque manner, "Check that the blanket is dry and free of any debris that could annoy an animal."

"Thanks for your help, and I'm Catriona—Cait—O'Neill," said the slight girl as she wiped off some dirt that had accumulated on the blanket. When she was finished, she lifted dancing rust-colored eyes to his impatient dark ones. "Now what do I do?"

It was on the tip of Zahir's tongue to tell her that she should leave the Riders now and use her vivacious eyes to lure in a good husband from her home village. However, he managed to squash the impulse and carry on with the saddling instruction. "Place the blanket well forward on the pony, and then pull it back toward the rear of the pony so that the front of the blanket rests just in front of the withers. Always slide the blanket with the pony's hair and not against it to prevent hair from getting clumped under the blanket. Also, always be sure that you are using a large enough blanket that shows all around the saddle, because too small a blanket will not adequately protect your pony from the saddle."

As he spoke, he watched Cait arrange the blanket on the pony, and then he made some minor adjustments to what she had done. During the course of one of these adjustments, his fingers brushed across hers, and he pulled them away rapidly. He didn't want to have any more contact than he had to with any girl who would disgrace her gender by becoming a warrior. Touching someone that impure might contaminate him.

After taking his fingers away from Cait's, Zahir bent to scoop up her saddle and then shoved it into her hands, being careful to avoid any physical connection with her at all.

Once Cait was holding the saddle, Zahir said, "Before swinging the saddle over the pony's back, place the right stirrup and cinch over the seat so that they do not hit and alarm your pony. Hook the right stirrup on the saddle horn to hold it in position."

Cait had no trouble with the first part of his instructions, but the second part bewildered her, and, snorting in exasperation, Zahir rested his hand over hers to show her what he meant. When he pressed his palms over the tops of her hands, he told himself that he couldn't feel her knuckles pushing into his skin and that he couldn't feel her sweat mingling with his own.

This was a mantra that he had to keep repeating to himself as he talked Cait through the process of saddling her pony, since at every step of the way, something would confuse her, and he would be forced to physically guide her through the step.

Finally, Zahir finished helping Cait, and, relieved that he would be able to leave at last, he turned away from her, not bothering to acknowledge her shout of gratitude, and quickly tightened the saddle of a male trainee next to Cait.

When Zahir tightened the boy's saddle, he had to bend closer to the boy, and when he did so, the boy muttered in his ear, "I'd look happier if I had just got the opportunity to touch hands with Cait. Of course, I also would have stuck around to help her mount the pony, so that I could have the opportunity to touch her more."

Before Zahir could reply that Bazhir chiefs did not contaminate their bloodlines by consorting with non-Bazhir and that women who didn't know their place were unworthy of his attention, Cait teased the boy whose saddle Zahir had just tightened, "Keir, I can hear you when you whisper, and I thought we were just friends."

"We're just friends until I can convince you to become more than just friends." Keir laughed, brushing a strand of brown hair out of his eyes.

"We'll be just friends forever then," snickered Cait, and Zahir thought that no Bazhir women would ever be caught making such an immodest comment. No Bazhir women would ever believe that she had the right to choose which man she ended up married to, either. Every Bazhir women knew that she would wed whoever her father selected for her. Bazhir women realized that they were inferior to men and conducted themselves accordingly….

Bazhir women were also boring, Zahir thought. Myra is much more exciting with her boldness and her beauty, and Cait's vivaciousness makes her intriguing, too. Oh, but what was wrong with him? He shouldn't be thinking this way. There was nothing desirable about a sharp-tongued maid, and there was nothing interesting about a girl who didn't even know how to saddle a pony.

Yet, that wasn't true. There was something that drew him to these non-Bazhir women, and he sensed that his attraction to these females was as fatal as the moth's attraction to the light. He was a fool to be drawn to such women, but he couldn't help it. Men couldn't be expected to resist temptresses. That's why women were supposed to wear veils.

"That's fine with me." Keir's hazelnut eyes gleamed at Cait, as Zahir rolled his eyes with disgust at being forced to witness their flirting. "We can court each other as just friends. Then, we can get married as just friends. After that, we can have children as just friends…"

"You can be kicked out of training as just friends!" shouted Sarge, suddenly appearing behind Cait. As Cait and Keir flinched, Zahir concluded that Sarge was just at apt at sneaking up on unsuspecting pupils as Lord Wyldon was. In fact, Zahir couldn't keep himself from cringing at Sarge's stringent tone, either, even though he knew that he wasn't technically under Sarge's authority. Sarge's air of command made such a distinction easy to forget. "Neither of you get to chatter like birds until you can saddle your ponies correctly without any help, because when you serve the Crown, you don't get the privilege of relying on someone else to assist you in doing your duty. Now, if you're done saddling your ponies, you can do something useful, and start riding around the yard."

Apparently, Sarge had no doubts that he would be obeyed, since the second the last syllable emerged from his lips, he disappeared to hector some other unfortunate trainees.

"Blast it," grumbled Cait, as Sarge disappeared. "Now I have to mount up. I hope I don't fall down twice before I finally manage to get on my pony today."

"Maybe Keir would like to help you mount," Zahir suggested quickly, eager to avoid touching her again.

"I'm not much better at getting on a pony than she is," admitted Keir, his face flushing sheepishly. "Actually, I probably need all the help I can get mounting myself."

"Anyway, I don't want Keir to help me, since he obviously wants to touch me, whereas it's clear that you don't wish to touch me and that it takes all your etiquette training not to pull away from me," Cait put in, eyeing Zahir in a keen fashion that made it apparent that she had noticed Zahir's discomfiture when their hands met.

"You have to understand that among my people men do not touch women they have just become acquainted with, and that men don't even hug their wives, sisters, and daughters in public," explained Zahir in a rather disjointed manner. Really, he didn't have to excuse his behavior, but, abruptly, he found that he didn't want to offend cheery Cait, and so he found himself offering this unnecessary justification for his actions.

"Oh, I thought my sweat just disgusted you." Cait grinned playfully at him, as he helped her mount her pony. Then, when he was done assisting her, he spun around to help Keir mount. Once Cait and Keir were settled on their ponies, they started to ride around the yard, and, deciding that he could help refine their riding technique and that he needed friends at the palace now that the friends he had made during page training were busy defending the realm, Zahir mounted his mare, Sufia, and rode after them.

Since he was a far more accomplished horseman than either of them, he caught up with them in less than a minute. As he fell in beside them, he said, "Keir, you don't have to clutch your reins so tightly. It makes your pony anxious and gives you more blisters. As for you, Cait, you can relax your spine and arms. Move with your pony. Don't act like a log. If you become one with your pony, you won't fall off."

"Easy for you to say." Cait gritted her teeth and made a feeble attempt to eliminate some of the tension in her arms and her back. "It's easy to relax when you aren't scared of toppling off."

"If you relax, you won't be as likely to fall off," Zahir said. "I just told you that. If you paid attention to me, you wouldn't have to worry about landing on your behind at all."

"I can't relax until I'm not worried about falling on my rump." Cait rolled her eyes. "That's the problem."

"Well, if you ride like a log, your pony will know that you don't trust him. If you don't trust him, you'll never become one with him. If you never become one with your pony, you'll always be clumsy and uncomfortable," replied Zahir, rolling his eyes back at her, as he discovered with a jolt that he was actually enjoying himself. "When you are stiff, every step the pony takes hurts your backside, but when you relax your body, it hurts less."

"I'll try to relax." Cait sighed in concession, and the tension in her body eased somewhat. "So, if you love riding so much, why didn't you join the Riders?"

"I'm the son of a chief," Zahir answered, and, suddenly, he felt some of the camaraderie he was beginning to share with the two trainees fade as the chasm of social class widened between them. To reduce that gulf a tad, he decided not to mention that he was actually a chief now that his father was dead. "That means that I am of noble blood, whereas Riders are mostly of common blood. At the very least, I would have to join the Own, which is made of second sons of nobles and sons from wealthy merchant and magistrate families. Of course, because I am the oldest—and only—son of a chief, it was expected that I would become a knight. Besides, if I wanted to join the Riders, I'd have to wait until I was at least fifteen to join, and I'm too impatient to do that."

"Oh." Cait was silent for a moment, considering this. Then, she said, "Well, I'm grateful that you were around to help me today, and I hope that you'll continue to help out around here in the future."

"I will." Zahir surprised himself by actually smiling at her, although, when he realized what he was doing, he killed the grin rapidly, reminding himself that he shouldn't be encouraging a woman to become a warrior. "I need something to fill my days, so I'll probably come down here whenever the king is at the palace, which is basically all the time."

"Wonderful," observed Kier dryly. "Cait and I need all the help we can get."

"I'll be happy to provide it," Zahir responded, unable to keep himself from smiling again. "Helping others makes me feel talented."

"Aren't knights supposed to be modest?" Keir shook his head in mock disapproval.

"Knights are." Zahir nodded seriously. "Squires don't have to be. In fact, they shouldn't be, since nobody would notice them if they were humble."

"Balderdash." Dismissively, Cait waved a hand. This required that she release the reins for a second, and she must have regretted doing so, for she wobbled and cursed before managing to right herself again. "No one pays any attention to squires, anyway."

"Nobody pays any attention to trainees, either," Zahir informed her.

"Yes, but I'm not so delusional that I believe they do," countered Cait.

Before Zahir could answer, Sarge was blasting everyone's eardrums out of their heads by hollering that the trainees were to return their ponies to the stable, and dismount and clean them there. Deciding that he could help Keir and Cait with dismounting and cleaning their ponies, Zahir rode into the Rider stable alongside them.

However, he never got the chance to be of much assistance to them, because his attention was stolen by the creature in the stall next to Cait's pony. What initially attracted Zahir's notice was the fact that the animal was too large to be a pony.

"I thought Riders were only permitted to ride ponies," Zahir muttered to Cait, frowning at the horse in the stall. Oddly, the horse bore an uncanny resemblance to Aisha's mare, Tayma—but, of course, it wasn't the same horse, since Aisha was dead, and Tayma must be as well. After all, the desert was as merciless with horses as it was with people.

"That horse belongs to some Bazhir girl—Zarina bint Shamal, I think her name is, but I admit I might be pronouncing it wrong." Cait shrugged, as Zahir helped her clamber off her pony. "She came here only a few days ago, but Sarge was so impressed by her riding and her bond with her animal that he decided it would be more efficient if she kept her old mount. She's so ahead of the other trainees that she receives personal training from Onua rather than from Sarge with the rest of us. I bet she'll be assigned to a Rider Group within a week."

Listening with half an ear to Cait, Zahir told himself sternly that he was not going to dare to hope that Aisha might still be alive and that she might be the girl that Cait was referring to. He would not torture himself by building up his hopes only to have them brutally crushed in an instant…

However, when the slim female in the stall next door shifted her curtain of dark hair out of her way as she brushed her horse, Zahir could see her features. A lightning strike of recognition lanced through him, and he couldn't restrain himself from bellowing, "Aisha!"


	6. Chapter 6

Changes

For a second, Aisha's dark eyes widened as she recognized her brother. Then, they regained their normal diameter as her face smoothed out and became impassive. Arching an eyebrow, she observed with cold courtesy, "My name is Zarina bint Shamal. I'm afraid you have the wrong person."

"Your name is Zarina bint Shamal, and my name is King Jonathan," Zahir snorted, ignoring the fact that both Cait and Keir were staring at him as though they feared that he was insane. After all, normal people didn't insist that a supposed stranger didn't know their own name. Of course, Aisha wasn't a stranger, but Cait and Keir couldn't know that the alleged stranger Zahir was addressing was actually his sister. As such, his behavior must have appeared odd indeed to them.

Perhaps noticing that Cait and Keir were gawking at her and Zahir, Aisha offered a brief tinkle of a laugh that rang false in Zahir's ears. "You must be confusing me with my cousin Aisha. Everyone is always going on about how similar we look, but the truth is that she has a birthmark, and I don't."

Then, before Zahir could answer, she snatched his elbow and yanked him into her stall. Her lips still twisted into an almost painful looking smile, she hissed into his ear, "What in the name of Mithros were you doing?"

"It's funny you should ask that, since I was wondering what in the name of Mithros you were doing here," retorted Zahir.

"I should think it was obvious to anyone with semi-functional eyes that I was brushing my horse," Aisha responded in a clipped voice. "I don't see what's shocking enough about that for you to shout my name out and risk destroying my cover here."

"The very fact that you feel the need to operate under cover here proves that you shouldn't be here at all," he snapped. He decided that the king's prohibition against challenging a woman's career decision did not apply to his sister. After all, Aisha was no stranger, and, by Bazhir law, she was under his authority, although she would probably never acknowledge that herself any time before Tortall crumpled into the Emerald Ocean.

"Why exactly shouldn't I be here?" Aisha arched her eyebrows.

"First of all, you aren't supposed to leave the tribe without permission from the chief—that would be me, in case it might have slipped your mind as so much seems to have—or the chief's appointed representative—who would be Nadir," snarled Zahir, his vision tinged crimson with his wrath. "Just by running off, you face being whipped within an inch of your life when you return to your tribe, and, frankly, you deserve to be. You should be beaten for your selfishness. I bet you didn't even consider before you ran away how your actions would affect others. I wager that it never entered your stupid little head that maybe you disappearing in the desert would make many tribesmen waste hours they could have spent doing something productive trying to find your worthless skin, and that your disappearance might distress your family, who would believe you to be dead."

"Don't you dare call me stupid!" Aisha's eyes scorched him. "I'm smarter than you give me credit for. I knew how my actions would impact my family and the rest of the tribe, and I still chose to flee from our tribe. I planned my escape for days, so that my disappearance would coincide with a sandstorm, which would erase any traces of where I had gone, since I didn't want to be tracked down and dragged back to face a thrashing. Perhaps I was selfish to disregard the feelings and the desires of my people in favor of my own, but selfishness isn't the same as being stupid."

"You're a fool if you believe that you can just choose to leave behind your people." Zahir snorted derisively. "We belong to the desert and to our tribe, Aisha. Even if we want to escape them, they'll always manage to keep us in their grip. If you haven't learned that by now, you must have gone through your life with your eyes closed."

"That's what you say, but yet here I stand away from my tribe, and no lightning bolt has struck me down yet for the blasphemy of daring to be myself." Aisha shook her head. "We can escape the desert. We can escape our tribe. We can escape pointless traditions. It's just the belief that we can't escape these things or that we shouldn't wish to do so that imprisons us."

"We have a duty." Zahir glared at her. "The tribe is more important than the individual, because only the tribe endures after the individual is dead."

"The tribe is nothing more than a collection of individuals." Again, Aisha shook her head. "It doesn't make sense for us all to be held hostage to each other."

"We're not held hostage," Zahir growled, feeling fires blaze in his cheeks.

"Then how come I'm not allowed to leave my tribe?" demanded Aisha, crossing her arms over her chest. "Why do I have to face the threat of a public whipping if I decide that I want to live somewhere else? How come I can't pick whom I want to marry—"

"Because with your nonsensical ideas, you'll end up not wedded at all or married to a rock," Zahir muttered, his hands balling into fists. "Some girls get a say in their marriages, but you do not, since whom you wed will have a great impact on the tribe."

Ignoring her brother's comment, Aisha went on passionately, "Why are you allowed to leave the tribe but I'm not?"

"I'm a man." Zahir's spine stiffened with pride. "A man's duty lies outside the tent, and a female's lies inside it. It's acceptable for a man to leave his tribe, but it's not proper for a female to do so. Anyway, I was the son of a chief. It was my duty to learn to be a warrior so that I could defend my people. You are the daughter of a chief. It is your duty to marry well. That is the best way you can serve our tribe."

"I can ride as well as you can." Aisha's eyes narrowed menacingly. "Why shouldn't I be allowed to ride out and have adventures like you?"

"You're a female," Zahir informed her tersely. "You stay in your tent and keep your face hidden behind a veil. You weave, cook, and clean. You support the men in your family. You help the women around you, and teach girls how to keep a tent in good order. If you did your duty, you wouldn't have time to complain about not going off to war, and if you focused on your chores, you wouldn't waste time daydreaming about such things."

"In short, women do all the work, so men can have all the fun," Aisha concluded, her tone as sharp as an arrow piercing into his skin.

"No." Zahir lifted his nose into the air. "Men fight and die so that women can be kept safe."

"What if a woman doesn't want to be safe?" Aisha's eyes contracted once more. "What if a woman wants the chance to endure the same dangers as men? What if a man doesn't wish to have to ride into war? What if a man would rather stay home and cook than rush into glorious battle?"

"If a man is weak, he should be ashamed enough of his cowardice not to mention it in public." Zahir's lips tightened. "If a woman is immodest enough to want to be like a man, she should at least have the decency not to make it obvious that she is so unfeminine. Anyway, it doesn't make a difference what they want. They have their roles to fill in the tribe, and if they do not meet their obligations, the whole tribe will suffer for their selfishness."

"Or maybe the woman who wants to be like a man can perform the tasks of the man who wants to be like a woman, and vice versa," argued Aisha. "Perhaps the whole tribe won't crumble just because the tribe no longer denies individuals the right to choose their own destinies."

"Well, you don't get to pick your own fate." Zahir's eyes smoldered. "You get to do what you're told just like everyone else, since you aren't half as special as you think you are. You're going to pack up your bags tonight and leave here before anyone uncovers your identity, because I don't want anyone thinking my sister is immodest enough to want to be a warrior. You will return to our tribe, and you'll take the beating you deserve for being idiotic and selfish. You will not tell anyone in our tribe about your stint with the Riders. If you do, no man will want to marry you, and you'll be stuck as a useless old maiden aunt in my family tent forever."

"I'm not going back." Aisha's face rivaled a boulder for hardness. "I'll commit suicide before I go back."

"You whore," spat Zahir. Suddenly, his hand itched to slap his younger sister across the face. The sound of his palm striking her cheek would be so cathartic, and maybe if he bloodied her lips, she would finally shut her insolent mouth. "How dare you talk of killing yourself when I've been mourning your death for days? Do you ever think about how much you hurt the people who love you?"

"You plainly don't love me if you called me a whore," Aisha countered curtly.

"I called you a whore because I love you," established Zahir through gritted teeth.

"You should tell that to your wife one day." Aisha scowled.

"Unlike you, my wife won't be a whore," scoffed Zahir.

"I'm not a whore!" Now, it was Aisha who looked ready to smack her brother. "I have never slept with any man, nonetheless multiple men. I've never even kissed any man besides from you or Father. I haven't even looked at a male lustfully, even though there are plenty of boys who can't stop undressing me with their eyes. Just because I refuse to be a typical female, that doesn't make me a whore. The sooner you figure that out, Zahir, the faster we'll stop arguing."

"The sooner you figure out that any Bazhir girl of your age who doesn't wear a veil is a slut, the greater your odds of making a successful marriage despite this indiscretion of yours will be," Zahir retorted.

"That's hilarious." Aisha emitted a wild laugh that seemed to contain more anger and frustration than humor. "You see, if I was concerned about making a good marriage, I wouldn't have fled from our tribe to escape one!"

"What are you talking about?" Zahir gaped at her. "Now that Father is dead, I am the only one who has the authority to marry you off, and I have made no plans to do so."

"Nadir said that since he was the chief of the tribe in your place, he had the power to decide who I married." Tears of fury glistened in Aisha's eyes now, but she stubbornly refused to let them flow down her cheeks. "Mother should have protested this intrusion on your rights, but she was too much of the meek female our customs had taught her to be to make any fuss at all. I could have refused, of course, but girls who don't marry who they are ordered to get stoned, because the greatest fear of any society is the uncontrollable female, so every society has to devise horrid methods to punish any female who won't obey orders."

"Nadir didn't mention to me any plans to marry you off." Zahir's forehead furrowed, as he started to wonder what reasons his cousin had to keep these facts from him and what other secrets his kinsman might be hiding from him.

"He wouldn't have," declared Aisha grimly. "He wanted to be wed to me himself."

"Oh, well, that explains why he didn't bring up the topic," snickered Zahir. "He didn't want to risk angering me by telling me that you made the blood in his veins roar with desire."

"Perhaps." Aisha sounded as though she didn't believe this, but Zahir, realizing that a female couldn't be expected to understand a man's desires, ignored her dubiousness.

"I don't see why you didn't want to marry Nadir, Aisha," he said, instead of trying to explain the incomprehensible to a female. "Nadir is gentle, so he wouldn't abuse you, even though you have a sharp tongue that would tempt any husband to beat you. He is not a fool, so you won't have to suffer the indignation of living with the tribe idiot, and he can hunt, ride, and fight with the best of them."

"I don't want to marry Nadir, because I feel no attraction to him, and I don't love him with anything but the affection one cousin should have for another," answered Aisha, her manner abruptly weary. "I don't wish to wed someone just because they aren't as bad a husband as they could be. Just because somebody is supposedly a good man, that doesn't mean that man would make a good spouse for me."

For a moment, Zahir frowned at her in utter bafflement. Then, it occurred to him that his sister, despite her unconventional behavior, was a female, after all, and she would be subject to the typical fears of her gender. Women, he remembered, might be temptresses, but they also were terrified of sexual activity. It was just another female folly.

"I see why you don't want to get married now," he commented, trying to sound understanding. "You're afraid of the wedding night. You're afraid that it will hurt to be with Nadir."

"I'm not afraid of anything." Aisha glowered at him, her exhaustion disappearing.

"Then go back to the tribe," ordered Zahir. "Act like a proper young woman, and if you're lucky, Nadir will still want to marry you."

"I'm not returning to the tribe," Aisha announced stiffly.

"You'll do as I say," growled Zahir. "I'm your brother, and your chief. You owe me your obedience."

"I owe you nothing." Aisha's eyes locked on his. "Any authority you have over me exists because I choose to grant it to you."

"No, the authority I have over you is something you have no control over." Zahir shook his head. "My power over you is built into the natural order of things. You are a female, and I am a male. You are younger than me, and I am older than you. I am chief, and you are not. Male beats female; old outranks young; chief is in charge of non-chief."

"I will not go back to the tribe. I will not be beaten by anyone. I will not marry anyone I don't choose to." Aisha's chin jutted out. "You won't be able to make me do any of those things, so what does all your authority over me amount to?"

"I could kill you for defying me," snapped Zahir, although he knew as he spoke that it was an empty threat. He could never kill his sister. The grief that had swamped him when he had believed Aisha to be dead was proof enough of that.

"Killing me for defying you would just demonstrate that I am capable of disobeying you, and that your authority isn't absolute." Unfazed by his threat, Aisha studied Zahir icily. "If you kill me, I win, and you lose."

"I'll tell the Riders that you aren't fifteen yet." Zahir's eyes gleamed craftily. "Then, they'll kick you out, and you'll have no choice but to return home."

"You have no proof that I am your sister, and that I am not yet fifteen." Aisha shrugged. "Besides, even if I am kicked out, I can find another job in the city."

"Fine," Zahir conceded, almost blinded by rage and resentment. "Ride like a man. Fight like a man. Act like a whore if that's what you want. Don't even wear a veil. Let any man see your face. Forget that you are supposed to be a proper Bazhir woman, and become a loose Tortallan one, instead. That's what you want, and in Tortall, we don't stop each other from selfishly abandoning the virtues of our ancestors. Then, we call it progress, instead of decay."

"Don't act all holier than thou on me," hissed Aisha. "When was the last time that you attended prayers with a shaman? When was the last time you prayed the five ritual daily prayers at sunrise, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and nightfall? When was the last time you observed the month of fasting?"

"That argument proves my point, not yours." Miserably, Zahir shook his head. "I'm a chief, and I haven't participated in those rites since the last time I was in the desert. Yes, I know that any time is the proper time to praise the gods and any place is the right location to worship, but I would feel like a fool if I just got down on my knees in the middle of a lesson or a conversation, so I don't follow the ritual prayer schedule anymore. There is no shaman around whom I can say prayers with, so I have to do it myself when I find the time and energy. The physical demands of my life make it hard for me to observe the month of fasting, and I feel like an idiot not eating when everyone else is, so I eat before sunset during the month of fasting. Gods, Aisha, what's happening to our people?"

"We're changing," Aisha murmured, her expression softening. "That's not a crime."

"It is when it feels like we're changing into something worse." Zahir's lips twisted bitterly.

"No, we're changing into something better, but we're just experiencing some growing pains," insisted Aisha, her hand squeezing his. "Sometimes things have to seem to get worse before they can improve, Zahir."

"I hate change." Zahir wrinkled his nose at her.

"I know."

"There was nothing wrong with the old way of doing things."

"From your perspective, possibly." Aisha rolled her eyes. "Not everyone has the benefit of being on top in the old order of things."

"Change won't fix all of the problems," Zahir warned, "and it will probably create a hundred new ones."

"Future generations will just have to mend our errors, then, won't they?" Aisha shrugged her shoulders, completely unconcerned.

"Great Goddess, I have missed you, Aisha." Before he recognized what he was doing, Zahir found himself chuckling. "Stay here as a Rider if you want. It gets lonely being practically the only Bazhir around here, you know. When you are one of a few Bazhir here, you learn all about how it feels to be lonely in a palace crammed with people."

"I'd stay with or without your consent, but it's nice to have it, anyway," remarked Aisha, a grin splitting across her features.

Zahir hesitated, and then said awkwardly, "I do love you, Aisha. It's because I love you that I say harsh things to you and order you around. It's because I love you that I lose control when I worry about you. Love is supposed to be so pure, but it just makes me commit my cruelest crimes."

"Love also makes you relent and brings out the best in you. Besides, I love you, too, Zahir, and when we love someone, we stand by them even though we have seen them at their worst. Love may make you commit your gravest crimes, but love can also redeem you." Aisha's voice was mild, as she leaned forward and brushed her lips against Zahir's cheek. Smirking, she added, "Oops, I probably shouldn't have kissed you. That makes me a whore, doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't." Although he realized that she was teasing him, Zahir couldn't help but smiling. "It's acceptable for girls to kiss their brothers and fathers as long as they aren't attracted to their brothers or fathers."

"Don't worry on that score," Aisha assured him mockingly. "Nobody could ever be attracted to you."

"Now that's not true," Zahir educated her, lifting his nose in the air haughtily. "Many a serving girl has been attracted to me."

"In your imagination, perhaps." Aisha dismissed this with a wave of her hand.

Zahir opened his mouth to retort, but she cut him off by gasping, "Blast, I'm five minutes late for lunch. I'd better go."

Then, before he could offer any form of farewell, she had hurried out of the stable, her mane of glittering black hair trailing behind her in a way that convinced Zahir that if anyone except him ever called her a whore, he would disembowel that individual. She was his sister, after all. He alone could deride her, since it was his obligation to protect her from everybody else.


	7. Chapter 7

Breaking All the Rules

Zahir knew that he shouldn't be in the loft of the Riders' stable with Aisha, Cait, and Keir. He was well aware that Aisha, Cait, and Keir were not permitted to leave their dormitories at this hour of the night, and he realized that, even if they were allowed to roam around at this time, he should be letting them get a decent sleep so they would be properly rested for tomorrow's training. Furthermore, he also knew that he should be sleeping himself so that he could be alert in his training sessions with the king and when he worked with the Rider trainees.

The problem was that sleep, when it came down to it, was rather boring. It wasn't as fun as creeping down to the stables and meeting friends in a loft. It wasn't as enjoyable as talking and laughing in the dark by the light of one candle they shouldn't have even lit so near the hay for fear of fire. It wasn't as exhilarating as playing a game of cards and horror stories until the adrenaline finally stopped rushing through their veins, and they returned, exhausted, to their beds, trying to catch up on sleep that they must all have been year's behind on by now.

The problem was that defiance was more exciting than obedience. Every laugh felt more wholesome when it was forbidden. Every joke felt more seditious when it should never have been told at all. Every secret felt more important when it never should have been whispered.

Disobedience had a feeling. It was the rush of blood in the veins, heating up the entire body. It was the sneaky, clever sense of being united in a covert sabotage on all forms of authority. It was the bliss of feeling free if only for a few hours. It was the thrill of knowing you were in danger every second, and the guilty pleasure of realizing that the potential of being punished made being bad all the more delightful. The forbidden in its own way was as much of an intoxicant as wine or ale.

Defiance had a flavor. It was the taste of the crisp autumn apples that Aisha, Cait, and Keir stole from the Riders' kitchen.

Disobedience had a scent, too. It was the smell of the hay they lay on in the loft. It was the odor of horses and dung. It was the decay of dead leaves drifting in through the open stable windows.

Finally, defiance had a sound. It was the sound of muffled giggles and stifled shouts. It was the sound of people who otherwise would have been boisterous constantly laboring to keep themselves and their companions in check for fear of discovery.

"Did Zarina tell you that she's been assigned to the Third Group- the Webspinners?" Cait asked Zahir.

"No, she didn't." Zahir scowled at Aisha. "My cousin never tells me anything."

He was getting used to referring to Aisha as Zarina, and to calling her his cousin rather than his sister. He was grateful to both Cait and Keir for swallowing his lie about Zarina being his cousin from another tribe, and about him confusing her with her twin Aisha that first day they had met in the stable. After all, it was best for Aisha if nobody knew the truth of who she was, and, once you had been lying to your friends for two weeks, the falsehoods flowed smoothly off the tongue.

"Thanks for spoiling the surprise, Cait." Aisha, who was dealing the cards, wrinkled her nose at the other girl. Then, she glared at her brother and added, "I tell you things when you give me a chance to, Zahir."

"I don't chatter on nearly as much as you do, Zarina," retorted Zahir, studying the cards that Aisha had distributed to him.

Around him, his comrades did the same, and Keir grumbled, "Merciful Mithros, who dealt this mess?"

"That would be me," answered a grinning Aisha.

"Have you ever heard of a rhetorical question?" Keir mumbled.

"Of course I have. I just think they are for people who have no imagination and who can't come up with decent arguments." Aisha's eyes gleamed at Keir. "I tried to cheat in your favor this time, Keir."

"Very funny." Keir's lips quirked. "It's a comfort to know that you are at least familiar with sarcasm, even if you aren't acquainted with the wonders of rhetorical questions."

"With all this complaining about how low your hand is, I can't help but think that you are just trying to up the bets," observed Zahir dryly.

"Are you going to bet, fold, or just whine?" Cait added. "Don't forget it's your turn first this time, Keir."

"Folding will save me some money." Keir sighed as he did so.

"Anyway, I have been assigned to the Webspinners," said Aisha, as she shoved a half crown onto the mound of hay where they were keeping the hand pot. Looking at her, Zahir found that a cavity was hollowing itself out in his chest. Even though she hadn't been here long, he couldn't help but feel that the palace would be a much emptier place without her laughter and a much more boring location without her rambunctiousness. It didn't take him long to get accustomed to having her around, it seemed. "I'll be leaving whenever they do. I probably won't be here more than a week."

"Try not to get killed." Zahir's tone was hoarser than he wanted it to be. After all, he wished to sound like he was jesting, not like he was serious. He didn't desire to sound soft and like he actually cared about her.

"I love life too much to try to get killed," replied Aisha, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. "You know, speaking of staying alive on the battlefield, do you think that I should cut my hair?"

"No," Zahir informed her sharply, feeling his throat tighten as though a noose were being wrapped around it. Aisha's shimmering black locks had always been a point of pride for him and the rest of his family. The Tortallans could steal her from her desert, they could make her change her name, they could convince her to forget her maidenly modesty and become a warrior woman, they could seduce her into removing her veil, but they couldn't take her hair away. Her hair was sacred, and her hair was her. If they made her lop off her hair, they would have robbed her of her entire identity. Unable to find the words to explain this, he concluded in the same fierce voice, "Your hair is pretty, and it's yours. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you should cut it. You should take pride in it."

"Your hair is beautiful, Zarina," agreed Keir, and Zahir wondered if there was something more than friendship buried in that remark. Unfortunately, he couldn't see the other boy's expression clearly in the flickering candlelight, and so he was just left with nagging questions about whether he was being paranoid or if Keir was yet another hapless bug who had been ensnared in Aisha's attractive web woven from strands of her glistening hair.

"Oh, as if the only purpose women had was to be beautiful." Cait snorted, slamming a half crown down into the hand pot. "Yes, Zarina, your hair is gorgeous, and personally, I would commit a great number of capital offenses to have hair as shiny as yours, but I can understand why you'd want to cut it. After all, when you live on the battlefield, there is always the danger of it getting caught somewhere, and slowing you down enough to kill you. Even if it doesn't do that, when you tie it back, it still has a knack at blocking your eyes at the most inconvenient times. Anyway, there is the fact that men never think about—that washing and brushing hair takes a lot longer when you have more of it."

"Those practical reasons are why I want to chop off my hair," said Aisha, dealing out another card each to herself, Cait, and Zahir. "The fact that my hair is beautiful and mine is why I want to keep it the length it is. I suppose I'm being vain and stupid, but I've had long hair since I was learning to walk, and part of me can't bear to give that up. I know that beauty doesn't serve any purpose at all, but I still want to keep my hair the way it is. It's pathetic."

"It's not pathetic," Zahir countered tersely. "It's traditional for virgins to wear their hair long, and getting it cut short is something done after a wedding night if it's done at all. By not lopping off your hair, you are displaying a reverence for tradition, and showing respect for the past is never pathetic."

"Beauty does serve a purpose, anyway," pointed out Keir, his manner rather dreamy. "It inspires us. It sparks love and devotion. It makes us forget about the harshness of life. It helps us to see the good instead of the bad in existence."

"Nonsense." Briskly, Aisha shook her head. "Beauty is a lie, and if you fall in love with something just based on its appearance, you haven't fallen in love with it at all. You just have lusted after it, and mistaken that drive to possess for love."

Before Keir could respond, they could hear voices and footsteps approaching the stable. Instantly, Zahir blew out the candle, as the other three shoved the money and cards under bales of hay. Then, the four of them ducked behind mounds of hay. They had only just managed to conceal themselves when the stable door swung open, and nine men and women in the Riders uniform strode inside.

Zahir couldn't make out what group they were from, but, apparently, Aisha, who was bent over beside him, could, for she whispered, "It's the Fifth Group—the Clouds."

Rolling his eyes at his sister's lack of stealth skills, Zahir clamped a hand over her lips, thinking that if she was going to pursue a warrior's life she should at least have the sense to shut up when necessary. If they wanted to not be discovered, they would have to remain silent, praying that nobody in the Clouds took an interest in the hayloft. Doing anything that might encourage a Rider to glance upward was just asking for trouble, but, then again, Aisha had always been the sort of person who loved to bring trouble crashing down on her shoulders and those of anyone who had the misfortune of being nearby.

However, Aisha seemed to be oblivious to his irritation, because he could feel her lips twist into a smile beneath his fingers, and the next second, she was resting her palm on top of his mouth, as though he were the one who couldn't keep it closed in circumstances such as this.

Luckily, nobody in the Rider group below them had heard Aisha, because the burly female who seemed to be in command of the Clouds was shouting, "So, make sure you're awake, everybody. It's a good five hour ride until we reach our destination, so we probably won't arrive there before dawn, but it never hurts to be alert. Taking care of a pack of spidrens isn't something you want to do when you're asleep."

"I'm so talented at disposing of spidren that I do it in my sleep all the time, Celine," quipped one man, and Zahir recognized it as the type of loud, hollow boast and spitting at death that was common before any battle.

After that, he couldn't discern any individual voices over the din in the stables as the Rider group saddled their ponies, mounted them, and rode out into the night. As soon as the stable door slammed shut behind the pounding hooves of the final Rider, Cait and Keir emerged from behind the hay bale they had been hiding behind.

"Thank Mithros they left at last," remarked Keir. "I was so scared that they would catch us, and Sarge would have our hides for a carpet."

"Don't be an idiot." Cait clucked her tongue impatiently. "That Rider group was so loud that we could have been hosting a ball up here, and they wouldn't have heard a thing."

"Let's not sit around talking." Aisha pushed herself to her feet. "Come on. Let's get a move on, all of you."

"Err, where are we going?" Zahir asked, as Keir and Cait frowned in bewilderment.

"We're following the Clouds, of course," announced Aisha, as though this were as obvious as the fact that the sky was up.

"Are you crazy?" Zahir, Cait, and Keir demanded in unison.

"No, I'm perfectly sane." Aisha's eyes blazed in the dark loft. "I'm the only one here who isn't forgetting my duty. I'm the only one here who isn't willing to go on playing cards after seeing a group of Riders go off to rescue a village from spidren attacks. I'm the only one who remembers that I promised to protect any Tortallan I could, and that means going to assist that Rider group right now."

"They don't need our help," Keir pointed out curtly. "They are experts at this sort of thing, and we don't even have the training necessary to defeat spidrens. If we followed the Clouds, we'd hold them back instead of being of any use to them."

"I've just been assigned to a Rider group." As she established as much, Aisha lifted her nose in the air. "I'll have to get accustomed to these things soon, won't I? Why shouldn't I start doing so tonight?"

"Because that isn't your Rider group," hissed Cait. "Anyway, in case it's slipped your mind, Keir and I are mere trainees, and Sarge will be yelling at us until the end of the century if we go chasing after the Clouds to help them do away with a pack of spidrens. Of course, we'll be lucky if we get to hear Sarge bawl us out. If we aren't lucky, we'll be slaughtered by the spidrens."

"I thought you were brave." Aisha scowled at Cait and Keir. "You both sound like cowards to me now, but I suppose people only show their true faces at moments like this. When there is no pressure, you can yatter on about all the valiant deeds you are going to perform, but all that talk isn't worth a stale bite of bread if you don't fulfill your promises."

"We're brave, not stupid, Zarina." Zahir thought that the two Rider trainees would explode, but, oddly, Keir's tone was suddenly tender. "There's a difference, you know. All the courage in the world doesn't amount to anything if it gets you killed before you can save anyone. Charging into battle without thought and without being prepared makes you an egotist. It doesn't make you brave."

"Make all the excuses you want for your cowardice, Keir. I don't care how you justify your behavior to yourself," Aisha said coldly, shrugging her shoulders in dismissal. "Well, Zahir, what about you? Are you coming with me?"

"Why in the name of all that is holy would I come with you?" Zahir scoffed. "I'm thinking of stopping you, not accompanying you in your insanity."

"I don't know why you'd come with me." Aisha's voice chilled another ten degrees. "Maybe you got tired of just grumbling about how bored you are. Perhaps you decided to actually do something exciting instead of just muttering under your breath about how dull your life is."

"I'm a squire," snarled Zahir. "That means that I stay by my knightmaster's side unless ordered otherwise. I don't go riding off on adventures whenever I need some excitement in my life. I have a duty. I can't just do whatever I want."

"Fine." Zahir could hear his sister's lips thinning. "If none of you will come with me, I'll go by myself."

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Keir, and Zahir saw the other boy's figure leap to his feet. "I'm accompanying you. I think you're mad, but friends are supposed to help their friends achieve their goals, no matter how insane those goals are."

"Keir is right." Cait had shot to her feet, as well. "We're going to do our best to keep you from getting killed, Zarina, even if it means dying ourselves."

"It probably will mean dying for yourselves, given that Zarina has more of a death wish than anyone else I've ever been unlucky enough to meet," mumbled Zahir, inwardly insulting his own parentage as he shoved himself to his feet and prepared to embark on the most foolhardy adventure of his life. Trying not to imagine how irate King Jonathan would be about this escapade and telling himself that if the gods blessed him more than they ever had in the past, there was a chance that he could return to the Royal Palace before anyone noticed his absence, he added, "Since I'm the only one among you who has ever fought a spidren, I reckon that I'm honor bound to go to reduce the odds of you all gloriously dying in a battle against them, although I suppose that I could stay here and just hope that when the Clouds discover you, they won't let you involve yourself in the fray. Of course, that seems awfully passive to me, so I'll just come along with you, and see if I can charm my way out of a royal reprimand when the king finds out about this madness."


	8. Chapter 8

Ensnared

Zahir quickly discovered that following the Rider group was among the most stupid decisions of his life. The problems began as soon as they left the stable, because none of them had a clue which way the group had rode off in. After examining the ground, however, they were able to follow the tracks into the Royal Forest.

Once they were in the Royal Forest, the difficulties truly started. Somehow, when he was in the stable thinking about setting out on this foolhardy little quest with his friends, he was able to forget that Cait was still very much a novice horsewoman, and that Keir, while a far better rider than Cait, still had no hope of keeping pace with a group of the Queen's Riders.

Of course, what with all the noise that Cait made while she blundered along on her pony, Zahir thought wryly that maybe it was fortunate that they weren't traveling close behind the Riders. After all, one would have to be as deaf as a grandmother not to hear Cait's pony smashing sticks and crunching leaves beneath its hooves, and, like most people who devoted their lives to serving in the military, the Riders were probably more acutely aware of their surroundings than most beings were. A group of Riders couldn't afford not to have their ears alert all the time for fear of ambush.

Then again, the fact that the Riders were so far away that they couldn't hear Cait's pony lumbering through the undergrowth meant that the odds of Zahir and his friends losing the Riders' trail were depressingly high.

"This is ridiculous," he hissed. "Zarina, ride on ahead. You'll be able to follow the group without announcing your presence to the whole country. Leave behind marks for us to follow, but be quiet about making them."

Aisha nodded, spurred her mount, and disappeared into the darkness in front of them. After that, he, Cait, and Keir were silent except for Cait's occasional muttered curse when she struggled to make her pony cooperate, as they rode along the path that Aisha marked for them.

Zahir was beginning to wonder if he would spend his whole life stumbling through a dark woods after a Rider group when the sky gradually lightened from a coal black to a pewter gray, as the pre-dawn sunlight began to illuminate the world.

The burgeoning light reduced some of the noise Cait made, since she could now see the ground on which her pony was traveling, and that allowed her to steer her mount around sticks and large piles of leaves. The pre-dawn light also seemed to enhance Cait's and Keir's confidence in their riding abilities, because suddenly their speed was increasing rapidly. This meant that, for the first time since Aisha had separated from them, they were able to catch infrequent glimpses of Aisha's mane of hair through the trees and bushes, instead of just relying solely on the marks she left behind for directions.

Zahir was just thinking that it couldn't be much longer before they arrived at their destination, since the forest was thinning, when faint screams reached his ears, and he flinched reflexively at the sound.

"This is it," muttered Keir, swallowing hard and stiffening in his saddle.

"No more practicing," Cait added, her face going so pale that Zahir wondered if she was about to faint, and prayed that she wasn't. He wasn't in the mood to be reviving her or carrying her back to the palace.

"We don't need to follow Zarina's directions anymore," he said grimly, spurring Sufia toward the shrieks. "We can just follow the screams."

As he charged through the woods, branches smacking into his face, Zahir was grateful for the blood thudding in his ears, the thundering of Sufia's hooves against the dirt, and the pounding of Keir's and Cait's ponies behind him. All those sounds blocked out the ever louder screams and wails—the piteous expressions of terror and hopeless appeals for rescue that reminded him that it was his duty to save people. It was his job to ensure that no son had to lose a father too young, as he had. It was his obligation to prevent any brother from grieving over his sister's death as he had mourned Aisha's passing when he believed her to be dead…

Suddenly, a shriek he recognized pierced through the air.

"Aisha!" he hollered, pushing Sufia harder than he ever had in his life, as a gigantic web woven between two giant oak trees came into view. Refusing to look at any of the people trapped in the spidrens' snare because he couldn't afford to be distracted by their pain right now, he followed his sister's screams.

"Don't worry. I'll have you out in no time," he assured her breathlessly, even though he wasn't sure she could hear him over her shrieking and the shouting of the other spidren victims. Hating his fingers for being too clumsy and slow, he yanked out his knife and tried to cut through the web. All that happened was that the knife got entangled in the sinuous fibers of the web. When he desperately tugged at the knife with first one hand than the other, first one hand and then the other was wrapped in strands of the web.

Recoiling instinctively from the disgusting material clinging to his wrists, Zahir tugged and twisted, but that only seemed to tighten the web's grip on him. Losing his head completely, he kicked at the web and found his feet ensnared in a wispy substance that felt as though it were in danger of being blown away by a mild gust of wind but that bound him more effectively than iron shackles.

"I'm sorry," he told Aisha through gritted teeth. To his shame, he could feel tears of fury at not only his own helplessness but also at his utter inability to save her flowing down his cheeks. Of course, once he had suffered the ultimate disgrace of being incapable of rescuing someone who depended on him, a minor shame like crying didn't scorch his soul as it should have. "I've failed you."

"It's I who has failed you." Aisha spun her head around to look at him, and he saw the strands of the web tighten around her neck when she moved. "You wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for me. You would never have come here if I hadn't bullied you into it, and you would never have been trapped in the web if you hadn't been attempting to get me out of it."

"I chose to accompany you," Zahir reminded her, shaking his own head. "I decided to try to save you. I might have succeeded, too, if I hadn't lost my head entirely."

"That's just another way I failed you." To Zahir's horror, salty rivers were beginning to stream down Aisha's cheeks now. He wanted to extend a hand to wipe them away, but he couldn't, not with the web imprisoning his wrists. "I meant to tell you not to touch the web when your knife got stuck, and not to kick at the web when your hands were trapped, but things moved too fast for me to master my panic enough to speak."

"Things moved fast?" Zahir blinked at his sister. "It felt like it took me awhile to get trapped in the web."

"It felt the same way for me," Aisha murmured, "but I think it must have taken even less time for me than it did for you. I just climbed right onto the web without thinking, believing that I could reach that girl up above us and cut her lose. It never entered my mind that the instant I touched the web I would be stuck myself. Mithros, I should have followed the Rider group to the cave, where they were going to prepare to ambush the spidrens when the monsters returned from hunting, but I couldn't do that, because I heard the wretched screams, and I couldn't just abandon anyone to the spidrens."

Aisha's words reminded Zahir that he and his sister were not the only ones imprisoned by the spidrens. Steeling himself for what he knew would be a sight out of his worst nightmares, he looked around the web. Bile blazed a path up his throat when he realized that two half-eaten bodies wrapped in webs to preserve them were located a few feet on either side of them, and that a wailing girl who appeared about thirteen whose body was still intact was trapped above them. One spidren was chewing the arm of a sobbing woman; another was eating the leg off a man whose howls were silenced abruptly when the spidren devoured his head in one bite.

Somehow unable to avert his gaze from the grisly sight, Zahir stared at the spidren as it wrapped the bleeding stump that had been the man's neck in the web, and then, leering, moved across the web to the thirteen-year-old girl.

"Get away from me," the girl shrieked, her scream rising a decibel, as the spidren approached her.

"That's not very nice," chided the spidren, stroking the girl's ashen forehead with his pincer, and the girl's scream died in her throat when she became too terrified to make any sound. "A sweet young lady like you should have nice manners, too."

"Flirt with someone from the same species as you," Aisha snapped, glaring at the spidren.

"I love her, though." With a nauseating crunch, the spidren bit off the girl's foot, and the girl fainted from the pain. "She's so delicious. Who wouldn't love her?"

"You don't love her." Zahir surprised even himself when the words poured out of his mouth. "If you loved her, you wouldn't hurt her like this."

"I love the taste of her." With another sickening crack, the spidren ate the girl's other foot, and Zahir thought that it might have been a mercy that the girl didn't have to be conscious when her body was devoured piece by agonizing piece. Fixing its bulbous eyes on Zahir, the spidren went on in a deceptively mild voice, "I get so tired of pointless chatter while I eat. Perhaps I should bite off your head and silence your complaints before I finish with this girl."

Before it had even finished speaking, it was inching across the web toward him. Abruptly, Zahir felt like every breath and every heartbeat of his contained a lifetime. Remembering Aisha's words about how time had slowed down for both of them when they were ensnared in the web, he wondered if his death would last an eternity…

No, he wasn't going to die, he hissed defiantly at himself. His knife wasn't far from him. Maybe he couldn't move his hands, but he could still move his head…

Quickly, because he didn't have the time to second guess himself, he jerked his head forward. To his relief, his teeth closed around the handle of his dagger. As the spidren's pincer tore into his arm, he shoved his head forward. The next second, the blade plunged into the spidren's eye, and blood squirted all over Zahir.

Incensed by the attack, the spidren's pincers swung wildly. Instead of connecting with Zahir, they sliced through the strands locking Zahir's hands into the web. Sending up a silent thanks to Mithros, he switched the knife from his mouth to his right hand, and, as the half-blinded monster bore down on him, he plunged the dagger into the beast's chest.

Blood streamed down Zahir's arm, and the spidren's pincers whipped at him again. Unable to dodge the pincers without removing his blade from the monster's chest, he had no choice but to allow the pincers to cut into his face and arms. All he could do was pray that the spidren wouldn't gouge out his eyes…

Finally, the pincer's thrusts lost their fury, and subsided into faint jabs. Then, the jabs faded into nothing as well, and the spidren collapsed onto the web. The weight of the giant spider's body falling ripped open the part of the web it landed on, and Zahir's feet were freed. Unfortunately, he couldn't enjoy his newfound liberty, because the falling spidren crushed him.

He had only just managed to wiggle out from beneath the spidren's corpse and was about to focus his attention on freeing Aisha and any other spidren victims that he could when a blinding flash of magical light illuminated the clearing. Before Zahir could process what was transpiring, a hailstorm of arrows had killed the second spidren. Then, a hand was tugging frantically at his arm, and he pivoted to face Cait's anxious expression.

"Praise the Goddess you're still alive," she remarked, dragging him out of the clearing, and then flinging her arms around him. "Once Keir and I saw how you became trapped in the web, we knew that we couldn't save either of you by ourselves, so we rode off to find the Rider group. The leader—Celine Smith—was furious at us for following her squad, but when she heard how many people were trapped in the web, she agreed to come here and rescue them, instead of ambushing the spidrens at their cave."

"Get off me," grunted Zahir, who was abruptly very conscious of the curves of her body brushing up against him, shoving her away from him. Seeing the wounded expression flicker across her face, and realizing with a start that he didn't want to hurt her feelings, he added, "I'm covered with blood, and I've got cuts all over me. It's best for both of us if we refrain from hugging."

Before she could answer, he said, "Come on. We have to go back for Zarina."

"No need," Keir called, as he helped Aisha, who was limping from an injury to her leg, walk. Settling Aisha on a log, he observed dryly, "I see that she's Zarina again now."

"She was always Zarina," Zahir answered, wishing that he sounded nonplussed instead of like a person who feared an important secret of his was about to be revealed to the world.

"Was she really?" Keir arched his eyebrows. "I could have sworn that you referred to her as Aisha when you heard her scream."

"I heard the same thing." Cait nodded, her face becoming stony.

"What I called her means nothing." Zahir waved a dismissive hand and instantly regretted doing so when a hundred fires ignited in his arm where the pincers had scraped him. "I was scared. I wasn't thinking."

"Exactly." Keir's eyes narrowed. "You weren't thinking. You called out the name 'Aisha' reflexively, and you spoke the truth, because you were in too much of a panic to lie. You referred to her as 'Aisha' since that is her real name, and Zarina isn't."

"That's not true," Zahir lied automatically, hoping that his face wouldn't betray him. "Her name's Zarina. She just sounds exactly like her sister Aisha when she screams."

"Don't lie to us again." Cait's tone was flat, and her rust-colored eyes were hard. "Don't insult our intelligence like that."

"If you know the truth, don't make us say it aloud," Zahir snarled, his wounds making his temper flare.

"I think Aisha owes us an explanation," commented Keir icily. "I think we deserve to know why she hid her identity from us."

"I didn't hide my identity from you," Aisha protested. She gasped when Keir sat down beside her and folded up her breeches. Resisting the urge to slap Keir away from his sister, Zahir watched as Keir cleaned her cut with water from his canteen. "I just told you that my name was Zarina when it is really Aisha. Why does that matter? What's in a name?"

"Everything is in a name," retorted Keir. His hands, as they wrapped a bandage around her injury, appeared to be far gentler than his voice. "A name is how the world knows you. If you change your name, you change your whole identity."

"Nonsense." Aisha shook her head. "An amaryllis by any other name would still smell as sweet."

"An amaryllis by any other name would be easier to pronounce, but it wouldn't be an amaryllis anymore," snorted Keir. Before Aisha could answer, he got off the log. "I'm no healer, so I've done all I can for Aisha. It's your turn to receive my tender ministrations now, Zahir."

Deciding that having his injuries cleaned would reduce the odds of losing any of his limbs to an infection, Zahir reluctantly removed his shirt, moaning when the fabric brushed against the slices lining his arms and face.

"Let's stop with all this philosophical mumbo-jumbo," Cait declared, and Zahir found it difficult to focus on her words over the searing agony that flared up in him when Keir's damp cloth stroked against a cut on his cheek. "The point is that both of you lied to us every time we were together when you pretended that Aisha was someone she was not. The point is that Keir and I both trusted you two, and you two took advantage of our faith in you."

"It's not like that," snapped Zahir, feeling like death would be a blessing if it spared him the pain of having his slices cleaned. "The only reason we lied to you about Aisha's name was because Aisha ran away to join the Riders. If we told the truth about her, she would have to return home for a flogging. Is that what you want?"

"Of course not." Cait didn't relent. "All Keir and I wanted was for you to trust us with truth. Since you didn't, we find it hard to trust you."

"So don't be friends with us anymore," Aisha cut in, folding her arms across her chest. "Report me to Sarge as a liar. Get me thrown out of the Riders now that you know the truth about me."

"If we did that, we'd just prove that you weren't right to trust us, wouldn't we?" Cait's lips quirked upward. "No, Aisha, Keir and I have no intention of betraying your secret, and that's the point—that we won't abandon you."

Before Aisha could reply, an irascible-looking Rider approached them, growling, "I'm to take the four of you miscreants back to the Royal Palace while the rest of my group tends to the wounded villagers and makes certain that any remaining spidrens in the area are dealt with. If any of you cause me trouble, I will make certain that you don't live long enough for Sarge to disembowel you."


	9. Chapter 9

Trouble

"In all my years of dealing with trainees, I have never seen a group of teenagers perform a more harebrained stunt," Sarge announced, his voice harder than Zahir had ever heard it before. It was shortly after noon, and the snappish Rider in charge of returning Zahir, Aisha, Cait, and Keir to the Royal Palace had left the four of them with Sarge, who was, if anything, even tetchier than the Rider who had led them back to the Royal Palace.

"Spidrens are not charming creatures, and they should be treated with utmost respect by all those who are fond of remaining alive," continued Sarge, rapping his knuckles on his desk to emphasize his point. "Only people who are well-trained should go into battle against spidrens, and, even then, it is advisable for such individuals to fight the monsters as a group. That's why Riders battle spidrens as a group."

"We know that," Cait muttered under her breath, her cheeks rosy. "We're not stupid."

"You do a fine imitation of it if you aren't, Trainee O'Neill," barked Sarge, who had clearly heard Cait's remark perfectly.

"Technically, we did go after the spidrens as a group," Keir pointed out, his shaky tone suggesting that he realized as well as Zahir did that Sarge would not be appeased by this logic. "We were following a Rider group."

"Something it was completely unnecessary for you to do," countered Sarge, and his narrowing eyes made it apparent that Keir had only dug a deeper grave for them by mentioning their decision to tag along behind the Rider group. "All of the Riders in that group had undergone extensive training. As a group, they were perfectly qualified to handle the spidrens. By following them, you only made it harder for them to achieve their goals, because, suddenly, in addition to rescuing the civilians and killing the spidrens, they had to worry about saving your skins. Apart from that, you not only risked your own safety by charging into a battle against spidrens that you were woefully unprepared for, but you were trailing group of military personnel."

Here, Sarge paused to shake his head before resuming his lecture. "It shouldn't take a genius to figure out why that might not be the most brilliant idea in the history of human achievement. It shouldn't require much thought to understand that people who spend much of their time fighting have developed very attuned senses in order to preserve their lovely necks. This means that people in the military have a bit of a survival instinct that involves attacking unwanted followers and asking questions of the corpses."

As it occurred to Zahir how much he didn't want to be one of those corpses, Sarge's manner lost its sharp, mocking quality, and instead became soft and almost kind. "It's like the jungle. By the time the Whatever-It-Is that's creeping through the trees out there is close enough that you can see for sure what it is—or who it is—you're already dead if the Whatever-It-Is happens to be nasty. So you have to make your best guess. Sometimes you're right, and you take out an enemy or spare an ally. Sometimes you're wrong. Then you die, or you have to live with having killed a group of innocent albeit idiotic trainees." He flashed his teeth in a smile that contained no warmth or humor. "And sometimes you're right, and you die anyway, because your friend turns out not to be your buddy, after all. You never know. You can't ever know anything for certain when you are fighting."

Against his will, Zahir found himself shuddering. Somehow, Sarge's chilling assessment seemed not only to describe the jungle and the battlefield; it also felt like an apt description of life as a whole. When he glanced over at Aisha, Cait, and Keir, he saw that they were equally cowed.

Seeing that his words had their desired impact, Sarge commented briskly, "Catriona and Keir, you have missed all of your morning lessons. You will make up the training that you missed this evening in your free time, and for the next two weeks, you will be on kitchen duty for all three meals. Perhaps if you no longer have any free time, you will not be able to create any more mischief or have the energy to devise new ways to kill yourselves."

"Yes, sir," Keir and Cait answered. Both of them were studying the floor as though they hoped that it would open up and swallow them to spare them some humiliation.

"You shouldn't punish them," protested Aisha, her jaw setting when Keir nudged her in the ribs in a vain attempt to silence her. "I was foolish, impulsive, and wrong. I deserve to be punished, but they do not. They tried to persuade me not to go, but I wouldn't listen to them, and it was I who tempted them to go. Everything that happened was my fault. They are not responsible."

"Everyone is responsible for their own choices, Zarina," Sarge responded, unmoved. "Keir and Cait decided to accompany you, and, for that, they will be punished. If you feel accountable for their actions, then part of your punishment will be watching the suffering you brought on your friends. The other part will be staying here when the Webspinners go on their next assignment, so that you'll have plenty of time to reflect on the fact that a person incapable of basic obedience, no matter how good a horsewoman, will never be of much use to the Riders."

"I understand." Aisha ducked her head, and then asked, "Sarge, may I assign myself punishment work?"

"You may." Sarge eyed her suspiciously.

"Then I assign myself to kitchen duty all three meals for the next two weeks," announced Aisha firmly.

Zahir wondered if Sarge would tell her that she wasn't allowed to help her friends with their punishment, but, instead, Sarge merely focused his gaze upon Zahir and remarked, "You aren't in my charge, and so I don't have the authority to punish you. Luckily, I have dispatched a trainee to the king with a message, so the person who does have the happy power to discipline you should be arriving in a few minutes."

Thinking that he was quite privileged to have the opportunity to receive a reprimand from both Sarge and King Jonathan, Zahir scowled, but, fortunately, Sarge didn't spot his expression, since the man had returned his attention to Aisha, Cait, and Keir.

"Zarina, go to the healers, and have your wounds tended to properly," ordered Sarge, waving a hand in dismissal. "Keir and Cait, you should head off to your afternoon classes. You've missed more than enough lessons already."

Feeling sorry for the fate that had befallen his friends and aware that he would probably soon be as weighed down by punishments as they were, Zahir watched as the three of them exited Sarge's office. Then, to avoid meeting Sarge's eye, he took an intense interest in a robin that was singing outside the window on the branch of an oak.

The bird had just soared away and Zahir was casting about frantically for something else he could stare at instead of Sarge when the door swung open, and King Jonathan strode in. As Zahir bowed, his knightmaster's eyes swept over him.

"Your clothes are torn; your arms and face are covered in cuts." King Jonathan shook his head in disapproval, and Zahir wished that his knightmaster hadn't mentioned the scrapes. He had been doing a wonderful job of blocking out the pain the injuries created, but the instant that his wounds were brought up, he could feel every cut as if it were a flame placed against his flesh. "You look absolutely disgraceful, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"I looked worse a few hours ago, and the spidren I killed looks much worse than I do, sire." Zahir's nose lifted. He had his pride, and he didn't want the king to think he was completely incompetent. King Jonathan had to know that he had managed to kill one spidren, since that made Zahir's decision seem a little less foolish, or at least it did as far as Zahir was concerned.

"Neither of those arguments are particularly convincing to me," King Jonathan educated him sternly, and Zahir thought that it was just his luck that his knightmaster would adopt that uncompromising view of the situation. "Come. Let's get you back to your quarters."

Although it was the last thing he wished to do, Zahir managed to persuade his legs and feet, which were as heavy as if they had been replaced by boulders, to follow the king across the grounds, into the castle, and up to the royal quarters. As he walked, his heart thudded in his chest. At first, he was convinced that his knightmaster would take advantage of the opportunity to scold him, but as they entered the palace and the man was still silent, Zahir discovered that quiet was worse than a lengthy reproof. When things were silent, he had more time to dwell on just how much trouble he was in. When his knightmaster was quiet, he had more of a chance to dread what would come when the king finally spoke.

They had almost reached Zahir's quarters when King Jonathan broke the horrible silence at last. "I'll have to heal those scrapes of yours."

"You don't have to do that, Your Majesty," mumbled Zahir. His cuts were hurting him, yes, but he could deal with the pain, especially if that meant that he spent less time in the king's presence and increased his likelihood of evading punishment.

"Don't presume to tell me what I have or don't have to do." King Jonathan's eyes flashed dangerously as he steered Zahir into his bedroom. "It is I who tells you what you have or don't have to do, Squire."

"Your Majesty, I—"

"I am quite capable of healing you myself, and I will not have you bothering the palace healers when I can fix you up myself," King Jonathan cut him off, which was just as well, since Zahir didn't have a clue what he was going to say anyway. "Besides, I can talk to you while I heal you, and I'm afraid you and I need to have a rather long conversation with each other."

As he established as much, he settled himself on Zahir's bed and gestured for his squire to sit beside him. Sighing as he thought that the "conversation" would be more of a tongue-lashing and that his knightmaster would probably be doing a lot more speaking than he would be, Zahir plopped onto his bed.

"Explain to me why you thought that following a Rider group in the hopes of being able to help them destroy spidrens they were well-trained to kill themselves was a wise decision," commanded the king, resting a palm upon the slices lining Zahir's right arm.

"I don't require a healing, sire," Zahir grumbled, twisting out of his knightmaster's touch, since anything touching his cuts caused bonfires of agony to flare within him.

"Don't try my patience, and be still," warned King Jonathan, putting his hand on Zahir's arm again, and making a hundred more fires blaze to life in Zahir's body.

"You're hurting me." The weak protest escaped from Zahir's traitorous lips before he could prevent it.

"Good." King Jonathan's tone was as cold as the sapphire magic flowing into the scrapes covering Zahir's arm, making them feel as though knives were piercing into every one of his wounds, but ultimately healing them. "Maybe the pain will teach you a lesson. Perhaps you'll remember the pain next time you start thinking that following a Rider group on a mission to kill spidrens is a good idea."

"I didn't think that it was a good idea," Zahir muttered, as the daggers stopped pounding into his right arm. When he glanced down at his arm, he saw that there were no more cuts remaining upon it. Before he could feel any real gratitude over this development, though, the king rested a palm on his left arm, and flames ignited there, instead.

"You didn't think it was a good idea, and yet you did it anyway?" King Jonathan arched an eyebrow.

"I should think the answer would be self-apparent, Your Majesty." Feeling that it was cruel to pose such a condescending question to someone whose arm was currently being torn apart by a million invisible knives, Zahir gritted his teeth.

"Watch your attitude," his knightmaster admonished. "It's not helping you."

"Fine." Zahir's lips tightened. "Sire, it wasn't my idea to follow the Rider group; it was my friend's."

It was easier to call Aisha a friend than to explain who she really was. It was safer, too. After all, the more people who knew that Aisha was his sister, the greater the odds that she would have to return to the tribe to be beaten within an inch of her life and possibly to be made an unwilling bride to Nadir.

"That's a wonderful excuse if you are about five-years-old, Zahir." King Jonathan shook his head, as the daggers ceased cutting into Zahir's left arm, and, when Zahir glanced down, he saw that the slices lining his arm had been healed. "Just because your friend decides to do something foolish, that doesn't mean you have to do it as well. In fact, if you are a real friend, you have an obligation to prevent your friend from making the unwise decision."

"You don't know my friend like I do, Your Majesty." Zahir scowled, as the king's hand rested on his cheek. Through the blue flames scorching his cheek as his scrapes mended, he continued, "You don't understand how she just refuses to listen to reason. You don't realize how she just does whatever she wants without caring about the consequences."

"Based on your behavior today, I would have to say that you are like the blackbird accusing the crow of being black." Again, King Jonathan arched an eyebrow, as he moved his hand over to heal the wounds on Zahir's other cheek.

Flushing as he thought about how he and Aisha had the same tendency to lift their noses in the air and stick out their chins when they were engaged in an argument, Zahir shrugged. "Thieves have a knack at recognizing other criminals, Your Majesty."

"You've only known the girl for a few weeks," his knightmaster pointed out, as the last slices on Zahir's face knitted together again. "How well can you really know her?"

"I've known her since before she was born." Zahir's chin had set, and he didn't care now if he gave away Aisha's secret. All that mattered now was convincing the king that he had been right. "I've felt her feet kick against her mother's stomach when she was in the womb. I heard her mother's screams during her difficult labor. I watched her learn to crawl, walk, run, and ride before the other children her age. I know that even though she loves life, she never seems to notice how much of what she does places her in danger of losing it."

"Life," repeated King Jonathan, frowning. "In the ancient language of the Bazhir, that would translate roughly as 'Aisha,' and Aisha would be the name of your sister."

Zahir hesitated, realizing how stupid it had been for him to spill out his sister's secret in a moment of prickly pride, and then he replied stiffly, "Officially, Aisha bint Alhaz died in the desert. Unofficially, she might have been reborn as Zarina bint Shamal, but it's the official story in this, as in everything else, that matters."

"And it's the unofficial one that's likely to be true," observed the king dryly.

"But you'll abide by the official one, won't you, sire?" Zahir demanded anxiously. His knightmaster had to know what would happen to Aisha if she was forced to return home…

"Squire, despite what you seem to believe on the contrary, I have enough duties to keep me occupied that I don't have to resort to needlessly complicating the lives of adolescents for my entertainment." King Jonathan squeezed his shoulder for a second, and then released it. "I am happy to hear that your sister is alive and well."

"Then you know why I had to go along with her crazy plan in order to keep her that way, Your Majesty." Zahir decided to take advantage of this opportunity to press his argument.

"A better way to keep her alive would have been to report her to an authority figure and have them stop her." Unfortunately, his knightmaster wasn't impressed by his logic.

"In other words, tattle on her," snorted Zahir. "Your Majesty, in the pages wing, we had about fifty terms for people who did things like that, and none of them were flattering."

"Sometimes doing the right thing will get us insulted." King Jonathan shrugged. "Fear of being insulted isn't an excuse to do the wrong thing."

"My sister would hate me if I told on her." Zahir glared at the king. "That's worse than any insult, sire."

"It's better to be reproached by a live friend than absolved by a dead one," King Jonathan informed him calmly.

"I'd die before I'd let my sister get killed, Your Majesty," snapped Zahir, refusing to consider how easily the spidrens might have been able to kill Aisha before he could save her. There were some truths that were to horrible for him to contemplate, and the image of her being devoured by a spidren was among them.

"Then you'd be dead yourself," his knightmaster countered sharply. "That's really not much better."

"Some things are worth dying for." Zahir raised his nose haughtily. "Keeping my sister alive is one of them."

"Fair enough, but dying for your sister just because you refuse to report her for doing something you know is foolish and unnecessary should not be among them." King Jonathan's azure eyes locked on his squire, and, as always, Zahir felt like the man could see every despicable thought he'd ever had, every petty vice he'd indulged in, and every act of spite he'd committed. Against his will, Zahir found himself thinking of all the horrible things he should have stopped, but didn't, and how nothing would ever be the same. Suddenly, his heart was sinking into his stomach as he reflected on all the pitiless things he had ever done. "Don't imagine that I don't realize that a part of why you allowed your sister to follow the Riders was because you were bored, and you figured that a spidren battle would break up the monotony of your days rather nicely. Don't think that I don't know that a part of you just wanted to prove how brave and strong you are by entering a fight you were unprepared for."

"Everyone keeps saying I was unprepared, sire." Zahir's eyes smoldered. "Yet I managed to kill a spidren by myself, and I might have been able to kill more if the Riders hadn't arrived and dragged me away."

"Good for you." His knightmaster's tone was all ice. "Of course, if you had failed to kill the spidren, you'd be dead right now, and, if your injuries had been more serious, you might have been maimed."

"I'm not nearly as weak as you and Sarge think, Your Majesty." Zahir's eyes narrowed. "I killed my own uncle in cold blood, because he had murdered my father, you know."

"I did know that." The king's voice was soft, but somehow every word rang in Zahir's ears. "That's not something to boast about, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"No, it's not." Zahir's lips thinned. "It's just proof that I am strong, sire. It's evidence that I can defend myself and those I care about. It just means that when the world hits me, I can and will strike back, instead of meekly accepting the blow."

"You're too hot-blooded and hotheaded for your own good, Squire," chided King Jonathan. "You're too young to understand just how close your impulsiveness comes to killing you. You're too reckless to see how much you throw away without a second thought. You're too young to comprehend that foolish decisions really will get you killed just like they would anyone else."

"At least I didn't run off to rid a desert city of demons, Your Majesty." The retort slipped out of Zahir's angry lips before it occurred to him that might be the most impertinent comment he had made to the king since this confrontation had started, and he hadn't exactly been a model of civility and humility.

"We're not comparing my bouts of youthful insanity with yours." The king's eyes burned into Zahir. "Suffice it to say that my experience has taught me quite a bit about adolescent impetuousness. I am grateful for the authority figures who took me to task for my hotheadedness, which is why I have every intention of disciplining you for your impulsiveness, Zahir."

"I'm honored, Your Majesty." Even though he was well aware that he should have been honored by the fact that the king would take the time out of his busy schedule to personally correct him, Zahir couldn't make the words sound anything less than ironic. After all, the truth was that he would infinitely rather that his behavior went unnoticed and, therefore, unpunished by his knightmaster.

"You are not—you would prefer if I didn't go to the trouble of disciplining you," King Jonathan noted wryly. "Unfortunately, you won't be getting what you want. You'll be writing a five thousand word essay on why your decision to follow the Rider group into a spidren fight was wrong, and what you should have done instead. I expect that essay by the end of the week, and if I'm not satisfied by the amount of thought you've put into it, you'll be writing a ten thousand word essay on the same topic."

"Yes, sire," sighed Zahir. Obviously, he wouldn't be having any more freedom over the next week than Aisha, Cait, and Keir, because if the king was actually going to read the essay he wrote, composing a last minute bit of drivel wasn't an option, especially since he didn't want the assignment to be doubled.

King Jonathan studied him for a moment, and then asked more gently, "Do you know why I need to punish you?"

"Because you're my knightmaster," answered Zahir dully, convinced that was as self-evident as the "because you're my parent" reply he had been forced to give his mother and father too many times to count when he was a little boy. Honestly, he hated when authority figures acted as though his brain had abruptly been replaced with vegetables when they lectured him. The humiliation of being treated like a moron must be a part of the punishment, he supposed.

"Yes, that's the safe and boring answer." King Jonathan smiled slightly. "There's a less boring and safe answer, too, though."

"Oh." Zahir wrinkled his nose. He despised riddles and puzzles in all their many baffling forms. "You should know, Your Majesty, that I'm not a very original thinker. Some people enjoy thinking outside the box, but I'm the sort who doesn't even realize there's a box to think outside of at all."

"Then I shall explain to you that I discipline you not just because it's my duty as your knightmaster, but also because I care about you and want you to reach the full potential I see in you."

"You care about me?" echoed Zahir, staring at his knightmaster. Truth be told, with his stubbornness and his surliness, he wouldn't have liked himself if he were the king.

"I do." Squeezing Zahir's shoulder, King Jonathan nodded. "To be honest, Squire, you remind me of myself when I was a young man."

"I do, Your Majesty?" Zahir blinked in astonishment and wished that he could contribute more to the conversation than repeating what the king had just said.

"In my youth, I did many things like rescue a friend from behind enemy lines in the Tusaine, which very easily could be classified as hotheaded." His knightmaster's eyes gleamed as if the mere memory of his impulsiveness amused him. "I was also often accused of being arrogant and too stubborn for my own good."

Zahir offered no reply. He was too busy thinking. Killing his uncle in a fit of rage that had been more about vengeance than justice, punching Myra, and charging at the spidren web without a plan when his sister had been ensnared in it all probably could be regarded as his hotheaded streak flaring within him. His need to win every battle, and his inability to admit that he was wrong even when he knew that he was incorrect had to be stubbornness. As for arrogance, he knew that even those close to him were sometimes offended by what they perceived as his overconfidence.

"Many of the flaws I lecture you for are ones that I struggled with myself when I was younger," the king went on, his bright eyes penetrating Zahir. "When it comes down to it, I have spotted in you the same leadership potential that I displayed. The truth is that arrogance is the name we give confidence when it grows out of proportion, just as stubbornness is what we call determination that has overstepped its bounds, and hotheadedness is courage that got out of hand. That means that the same raw abilities that create some of the best leaders can also make the worst leaders if they aren't kept in check."

Here, Zahir felt his knightmaster's hand tighten around his shoulder again. "That means that the line between what is best and what is worst in us, Zahir, is a very faint one, indeed. That means that what should be our greatest strengths could easily become our greatest weaknesses."

"Yes, sir." Zahir swallowed hard. Suddenly, he wished that he hadn't been born with the ability to act calm when he was panicking on the inside, the desire to fight no matter how much of a losing battle he was engaged in, and the incredible need to make the world conform to his vision of how everything ought to be. Abruptly, he didn't want to have to take responsibility for the power those traits wielded over him and others. Yet, not accepting responsibility for them wouldn't make them go away. Maybe that was the scariest thought of all, because he could run, but he couldn't hide from himself.

"That's why I have to discipline you, Squire. I want you to become the leader you should be." After giving his shoulder one final squeeze, King Jonathan rose. "You would do well to catch up on the sleep you missed last night now."


	10. Chapter 10

Author's Note: My apologies for the delay in posting. Suffice it to say that school has been killing me with essays…

Suspicions

In the days following the incident with the spidrens, Zahir found himself spending a depressing amount of his free time staring blankly at pieces of parchment, trying to think of things to write in his punishment essay. Finally, when he was starting to believe that he could see the blood vessels in his eyes, his brain would devise something to write, and he would scribble it out. Then, more often than not, he would re-read what he had just written, deem it unsatisfactory at best, and cross it out impatiently.

Looking down on the angry line dashed through the sentence he had just written, he would always scowl at the disorder of the whole essay he was struggling to cobble together. Essays were supposed to be neat and coherent. Sure, he could re-write the essay on fresh parchment once he was done figuring out what he even wanted to say in the first place, but that wouldn't disguise the fact that his work was disjointed at best. After all, it was difficult to clearly describe his thought processes when so many of the ideas in his head were as fleeting as lightning, as shifting as quicksand, or as slippery as a snake's scales.

When every sentence was a battle, it wasn't shocking that, when he was working on his essay, his mind was in the habit of drifting off to focus on other things. One afternoon, as he was gazing dumbly out the window at the mostly bare trees, he found himself recalling his conversation with Aisha about Nadir for the first time since his sister had arrived at the Royal Palace. Suddenly, it struck him as rather suspicious that Nadir had not sought Zahir's permission to marry Aisha. That was a clear case of stepping on territory that rightly belonged to Zahir, and that, in turn, made him wonder what else Nadir might be up to that he wasn't confiding in Zahir…

Assuring himself that it was boredom that was making him suspicious of his own kinsman and that Nadir hadn't mentioned his wish to wed Aisha only because he didn't want to admit to Zahir how he lusted after Zahir's little sister, Zahir pulled out a fresh roll of parchment. Then, telling himself that his duties to his tribe were more important than any essay, he wrote:

_Dear Nadir, _

_May this letter find you in good health. _

_It brought me much pleasure to read your report that the flocks are flourishing. I am sorry, but not surprised, to read that the brothers Riyad and Sabeeh ibn Tali were arguing over which goats and sheep belonged to each of them again, but I believe that your judgment in this matter was fair._

_In regards to the search for Aisha, it has gone on long enough, and you have my permission to call it off. Surely, if her body hasn't been discovered by now, it must have been swallowed up by the sand. It is a pity that she has perished, since I was thinking that a marriage between you and my sister would be of great benefit to our family and our tribe. Alas, though, that is just one of a hundred things that will never be, because Aisha is dead. _

_I hope that everything continues to go well with the tribe, and may Mithros preserve you. _

_Your Chief, _

_Zahir ibn Alhaz_

His forehead furrowing, Zahir examined what he had written and decided it said exactly what he wanted it to. The opening was polite and affectionate as befit a greeting between kin, but it wasn't overly warm. The second paragraph demonstrated that, even though he was far away from the desert, he was still interested in his tribe, and it should also serve as a subtle reminder that Zahir could replace Nadir if he found his cousin's performance inadequate.

As for the third paragraph, it was mournful without being weak and tearful. The mention of a potential marriage between Aisha and Nadir was also designed to draw his cousin out—to make him admit that he thought a marriage between himself and Aisha would have been desirable. After all, if Zahir brought it up first, Nadir would have no need to fear his ire by merely agreeing with him. Then, the closing was good, too; it made it plain that Zahir expected to be kept informed about what was happening in the desert, and it ended on just the right formal note to remind Nadir of just who was chief without being rude.

He wasn't arrogant enough to regard it as perfect, but it was definitely much better than his pathetic attempts at writing an essay. Besides, it also provided him with the excuse of abandoning his essay in order to find a courier to carry his essay to Nadir.

Of course, he regretted his choice to abandon his essay when the end of the week came, and his essay was only halfway done. It was with a sense of panic that Zahir noted that he had only a few hours in the afternoon to write about five thousand more words. This panic drove him to write in a fury, not caring if the words he scribbled made sense as a whole or if they were even legible. He wrote in this mad state for two hours before a knock on his door interrupted him.

"What do you want now?" he demanded irritably when he swung open the door and realized that it was Myra who had distracted him.

"Only to be of service to the rudest squire I've ever met." Myra curtsied mockingly and then thrust a note into his hand. "A courier rode in with this message for you."

"You know that the only reason that someone as impertinent as yourself could ever have been appointed as a servant in the royal chambers is your looks," muttered Zahir absently, studying the envelope of the letter and discovering that the note was from Nadir. That was wonderful. Now he would hear what his cousin had to say about the prospect of a marriage with Aisha. Now he might finally be able to stop doubting his own kinsman.

"Well, the only reason an ill-mannered brute like you would become the king's squire is that a ruler with a Bazhir squire seems so progressive," Myra retorted, her cheeks ablaze.

"Have I mentioned today how much I loathe you?" Not at all pleased to hear someone who under the best of circumstances caused his blood to boil articulate his own suspicions as to why he had been asked to serve as King Jonathan's squire, Zahir glowered at her.

"No, but that's only because we haven't come face to face earlier today, Squire." Smirking, Myra dipped another curtsy. "Well, I can't dally with you any longer, I'm afraid. Some of us have actual duties to perform, after all."

Zahir had every intention of advising her in the crudest fashion possible to engage in sexual relations with herself, but she had already spun on her heel and walked away from him. Telling himself that reading Nadir's letter was far more important than bickering with a stupid maid, he shut the door to his room, slit open the envelope, and plopped on his bed to read:

_My dear cousin Zahir, _

_May this note find you in nothing less than the best of health. As always, it was a pleasure and an honor to receive your letter. I trust that it will bring you delight to learn that our flocks are continuing to thrive, and that there have been no disputes in the tribe since the conflict between Riyad and Sabeeh that I described to you earlier. _

_As for Aisha, it pains me greatly to surrender the search for her, but I trust in your judgment, and I believe, as you do, that if she has not surfaced by now, she never will. Sometimes giving up hope can be agonizing, but, in the end, we can only pray that it is less painful than refusing to accept the truth. _

_In terms of a marriage between your late sister and I, I am honored that you would consider humble me worthy of your beautiful sister's hand, but I assure you that I would never look so high as to wed her. Only a chief or a future chief is worthy of a chief's daughter, after all. _

_May Mithros shield you._

_Your humble servant, _

_Nadir ibn Kamal_

Frowning, Zahir stared down at the letter. Nadir had lied about never having the audacity to even contemplate the notion of wedding Aisha. The fact that Nadir would lie about such a thing made Zahir's eyes narrow and his stomach knot. Worse still, the line about only a chief or a future chief being fit to wed the daughter of a chief caused the blood in his head to pound against his eardrums. That sounded too close to a challenge for his liking…

Forgetting all about his punishment essay, Zahir raced out of his bedroom, down a maze of corridors, down what felt like twenty staircases, out of the Royal Palace, and across the grounds to the Rider's barracks. Grateful for the fact that he spent enough time around the Rider trainees not to be questioned at the door, Zahir burst into the kitchen, where Aisha, Cait, and Keir were among the Riders on kitchen duty.

"The king wants to see Zarina," he panted, as everyone in the kitchen stared at him, and all the knives that had been chopping a second ago fell silent. Snatching Aisha's wrist and dragging her out of the door that led outside, he added, "Everybody else can return to their work now."

"The king wishes to speak with me?" asked Aisha dubiously, as soon as they had rounded the corner of the barracks and she could be certain that they were out of earshot of the kitchen.

"No," Zahir answered. "I have to speak with you."

"Can't it wait? I'm on kitchen duty." Without waiting for a reply, Aisha pivoted and began walking back to the kitchen.

"No, it can't wait," snarled Zahir, clutching her wrist again and yanking her toward him. "I just received a letter from Nadir stating that he would never have the arrogance to even dream of marrying you."

"You think I'm lying about him wanting to wed me, then?" Aisha demanded, the syllables coming out of her in sharp gasps. "You think I invented that story just to have an excuse to leave the desert?"

"No." Zahir shook his head. "One of you two is lying to me, but I don't believe the one to be you, Aisha. I think that if you just ran away from the desert because you wanted to have adventures and be free you would have just told me that. You wouldn't have made up a wild story about Nadir wanting to marry you without my permission."

"You're right." Aisha favored him with a slight smile. "Maybe you are still the person who knows me the best."

"Maybe I'm still the person who knows you the best?" Happy to briefly forget about the doubts about Nadir that were gnawing away at his mind and heart, Zahir returned her grin. "Come now. Who could possibly know you better than I?"

"Keir and I are getting to know each other pretty well," she responded, her eyes glittering slyly.

"If Keir brushes his lips against yours, I'll kill him," growled Zahir, clenching his fists.

"No, you'll respect my ability to choose whom to lock lips with, and leave him alone," Aisha countered, rolling her eyes. Then, sobering, she went on, "To be honest, I never trusted Nadir. I mean, how well do we really know him, Zahir? We never played with him when we were children."

"That's because our fathers didn't get along." Zahir waved this off. "It's not fair to blame Nadir for the grudge between our fathers."

"Perhaps not." Aisha shrugged. "Yet, fathers pass on their resentments and feuds to their children. You know that, because you grew up hearing our father complain about all the ways that Kamal subverted his authority and made life difficult for him. Knowing that, can you imagine how Kamal must have raised Nadir to be bitter and to believe that our side of the family was always wronging—and stealing from—his side of the family?"

"I can imagine that." Sighing heavily, Zahir ran his hands through his hair, not caring about how much he messed it up. "Aisha, Nadir told me when I killed his father before his eyes that he wanted to put that rift behind us. He said he just wanted the dead past to bury its own dead for once. He said that our family needed more love and understanding, not anger and resentment."

"Of course he would tell you that." Aisha shook her head. "Zahir, you killed the man who murdered our father. How can you possibly believe that somebody who just watched their cousin slay their father could just forgive and forget? How can you think that Nadir wouldn't want vengeance upon you for stealing his father's life?"

"If he wanted revenge, he could have just charged at me with an unsheathed sword," Zahir pointed out, wondering with a sickening twist of his stomach if he had been a fool ever to trust Nadir.

"Then he would have died, too." Again, Aisha shook her head. "No, I don't think Nadir wanted to die in a blaze of glory. I suspect that he wanted to live to undermine you, and the only way to do that would be to act as though you killing his father didn't make him despise you. I reckon that he knew the best way to attain revenge would be to gain your trust and then abuse it."

"You have no proof." The words emerged almost soundlessly from Zahir's numb lips.

"This isn't the sort of thing where you can afford to wait until you have proof for." Aisha reached out to squeeze his hand. "Nadir would have forced me to marry him without your consent, though, and it should be noted that would put him in a good position to claim the position as headman in his own right."

"You're lying," Zahir snapped, not wanting to believe what he was hearing. "You're just jealous of how pure Nadir is."

"I'm not lying." Aisha's eyes scorched him. "Nadir's the one who has cause to lie to you and has been doing so since the day you decapitated his father."

"I would have noticed what he was doing." Stubbornly, Zahir shook his head.

"No, you wouldn't have." Aisha's gaze softened. "You are impatient, quick to anger, and vengeful. When something incites your wrath, you instantly try to destroy it. If someone wrongs you, you lash out at them immediately. You don't devise elaborate plots of vengeance. You don't bother to hide your hatred with friendliness. You don't smile at a person while slipping poison into their goblet. However ugly your emotions are, you are honest about showing them, and, while I don't always approve of the aggressive manner in which you display them, that's something I've always admired about you, brother. It's also something that blinds you. Even among the Bazhir with our fierce honor code, people will pretend a million feelings if it will get them more power."

"I feel like such an idiot for trusting Nadir," Zahir mumbled, his face burning.

"Don't." His sister leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. "There's nothing shameful about wanting to believe the best about a person. It's the beings who take advantage of that sort of faith that are reprehensible."

"And it's fools like me who tend to die while reprehensible people live to steal our property," snorted Zahir, although he did feel some of the tightness in his chest relaxing. Brushing his lips against her own smooth cheek, he whispered in her ear, "By the way, Nadir was right about one thing: he wasn't worthy of you."

"That's not much of a compliment. Only a snake would be fit to marry such a liar." Aisha giggled. "Well, I'd better go back to making supper. Cait will be very cross with me if I make her cut all the carrots herself."

Before he could respond, Aisha had twirled on her heel and disappeared into the kitchen again. For a moment, Zahir stared after her, asking himself if he was being paranoid about Nadir. Maybe Nadir had only lied about wanting to marry Aisha because he had believed her to be dead, so admitting that he had wished to wed her would, in his mind, do no good now.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Zahir trudged across the grounds, into the palace, and back to his room, where he collapsed upon his bed. Nadir didn't seem evil or cruel. He was so smooth, and, on the surface, he appeared to be so much better than Zahir.

Yet, it was those very virtues that made Zahir doubt his own cousin now, and those suspicions in turn prompted Zahir to question himself. Was Nadir really plotting against him? Did Nadir wish to forget the feud between their branches of the family, or did he seek vengeance for his father's murder? Was Zahir just jealous of his cousin's purity, and did that envy cause him to imagine that Nadir was guilty of crimes his kinsman would never even contemplate committing? Would Zahir ever know?

A second after his brain posed this inquiry, he snorted at his own folly. Obviously, he would find out if Nadir was plotting against him if he was overthrown. Unfortunately, however, that knowledge would come too late to do him any good. No, he couldn't afford to wait for any more evidence before he acted…

Suddenly, Sarge's words about battle being like the jungle came back to him, and he remembered how Sarge had described how a person never could tell whether what was approaching was an ally or an adversary. That meant that a person always had to make their best guess. Sometimes a person guessed right, killing an enemy or sparing a friend, but sometimes a person guessed wrong, getting themselves killed or slaying an ally. Then sometimes a person was correct but died anyway, since their alleged ally wasn't such a loyal friend, after all. The point was that you could never know for sure who you could have faith in, and he could feel that uncertainty choking him now. Was Nadir a friend or a foe? Was it better to be an innocent dead victim or a guilty living murderer?

Mithros, there were so many questions he couldn't answer, and, yet, as chief, he was expected to do so. Moreover, he was expected to arrive at the right answers. How could he possibly do so, though, with so little experience? It was as if he spent half his life banging into furniture in a dark chamber, but was somehow expected to be able to guide others through that blackened room. It didn't make any sense at all, but Zahir noted grimly that he was starting to learn that nothing in the world was logical, and maybe that was the only certainty anybody ever had…

A rap on his door interrupted his thoughts.

"Who is it?" he shouted, cursing under his breath at the distraction. He hoped vaguely that it was Myra, so that he could channel some of the frustration dammed inside him into her by telling her in the rudest fashion he could devise to leave him alone.

"Your knightmaster." That clear voice could only belong to King Jonathan, all right, and Zahir exhaled gustily.

"Come in, Your Majesty," Zahir replied loudly enough to be audible through the wooden door. Wondering bitterly why the king even bothered knocking when Zahir couldn't tell him to go away, anyway, he added in a mutter, "If you must."

The door swung open and King Jonathan entered barely a second after Zahir's lips had closed around the last mumbled syllable.

"It's the end of the week," he remarked, as Zahir rose and bowed. "May I have your essay?"

Oh, the essay. Zahir had forgotten it existed the moment he started reading Nadir's letter. Figuring out whether he could trust Nadir and what, if anything, was to be done about his cousin had consumed all his brainpower.

"You may have the half that is finished if you'd like, sire," responded Zahir vaguely. Normally, he would be panicking if he realized that he hadn't completed a punishment essay in time, but right now that struck him as utterly irrelevant to his life. Anything that didn't provide him with some insight on the Nadir dilemma was a useless distraction.

"It's only half done?" his knightmaster repeated, arching an eyebrow.

"Yes." Something in the king's manner made Zahir's spine stiffen and his chin lift defiantly. "I don't care that it's only halfway finished, Your Majesty."

"Zahir!" It was only his name, but when King Jonathan said it so sharply it was reproach enough.

"I don't care," he insisted in a quieter voice. "I have more important things to worry about than essays. I'm the headsman of my tribe, and I have to figure out whether I can really trust my cousin to lead my people while I'm away from the desert. That matters to me more than any essay."

"Even if that essay was assigned by your king?" King Jonathan's eyebrow rose again. "You have duties to me, as well as to your people."

"My people have only one chief." Zahir shrugged. "You have thousands of subjects, sire. If you really need something done, it's easy enough for you to find somebody else to do anything that I could do. I'm not so egotistical that I believe I'm truly irreplaceable to the realm."

"Fair enough." King Jonathan nodded, accepting his squire's logic, and Zahir, who had been anticipating an argument, blinked in astonishment. "I admire your ability to think out your position on this, Squire."

"I didn't think my position through at all, Your Majesty," admitted Zahir, his honesty preventing him from accepting praise he hadn't earned. "I just forgot about the essay as soon as I read Nadir's letter. I had every intention of finishing the essay until I received Nadir's note, and then I forgot about it entirely."

"I see." Zahir thought he detected a trace of humor glinting in his knightmaster's eyes, but the man's tone was somber as he asked, "What was so serious about Nadir's letter?"

"It doesn't matter, sire," Zahir answered, because he didn't want to share his suspicions with the king. He was afraid that he would sound paranoid, and, anyway, he wished to solve his own problems without his knightmaster's interference.

"You expect me to believe that something that has you worrying about whether you can trust your cousin to lead in your absence is of no consequence?" King Jonathan shook his head reprovingly. "Obviously, you take me to be more of a fool than I am."

"I don't take you for a fool, Your Majesty," responded Zahir swiftly. "It's just that what is important to me might not be important to you."

"I'm the Voice, Zahir," the king reminded him. "It matters to me who is in charge of any tribe."

"I am in charge of my tribe," declared Zahir stiffly, lifting his nose in the air.

"Come, come, Squire," his knightmaster admonished. " I respect your desire to handle this issue by yourself, but you haven't been the headsman of your tribe for long, and I have a considerable amount of experience leading people. In this case, I think you would be wise to at least listen to the advice I'm willing to offer you before discarding it."

"Very well, sire." Zahir bit his lip, and then began awkwardly, "When my younger sister first got to the palace, she told me that the main reason why she fled was because she didn't want to marry Nadir, and he was ordering her to wed him."

"With your father gone, you're supposed to be the one handling Aisha's marriage prospects," King Jonathan murmured, frowning.

"Exactly." Zahir nodded and continued, "Anyway, Your Majesty, at the time, I didn't find it odd that Nadir didn't seek my permission to marry my little sister. I thought that he was nervous about asking for my sister's hand because he didn't want to admit to me that he found Aisha attractive. It was only later on that it occurred to me that maybe he didn't ask my permission not because he was afraid of my being angry about his attraction to my younger sister. It was only later on that I started to think that perhaps he didn't seek my permission because he didn't want me to know about the marriage until it had already been consummated, at which point nothing could end it except death or adultery. It was only later that I realized that perhaps Aisha's beauty was blinding me to Nadir's real reason for wishing to wed her. If Nadir married my sister, he could have a strong claim to being headsman, since both he and his wife would have the blood of chiefs running in their veins. With such a claim, Nadir could consolidate his position and overthrow me if he was lucky before I even had a chance to hear of the wedding. When these thoughts occurred to me, I found myself doubting my cousin for the first time. I wrote to him, telling him that it was a shame that Aisha had died in the desert since I had been thinking that a marriage between he and my sister would be a good idea. I hoped that Nadir would admit now that she was dead that he had been interested in wedding my sister, but he didn't. In fact, he lied to me, saying he would never dream of marrying a chief's daughter, since only a chief or a future chief was worthy of doing such a thing. I don't understand how he could fear my anger when I was the one who had made the suggestion, so agreeing that it was a good idea wouldn't be a danger to him. Also, since he had said that only a chief or a future chief was fit to marry a chief's daughter, I had to wonder if Nadir saw himself as a future chief when he was writing his letter. "

"What twisted roots so many family trees have." King Jonathan shook his head, and his eyes took on a faraway look. "I too have been turned upon by my own cousin. He was a duke, a powerful sorcerer, and one of the most respected men in the realm. Many people in Tortall would have committed murder several times over to enjoy half of the power my cousin Roger did, but all that Roger had wasn't enough for him. Before I was born, he had been heir to the throne, and perhaps he never forgave me for stealing that position from him. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't the human tendency to be dissatisfied with whatever you happen to possess that creates all the evil in the world. So many beings wouldn't steal from their neighbor if they didn't see their neighbor's goods and immediately begin coveting them. So many people wouldn't commit adultery if they didn't see that someone else had a more beautiful spouse than they did and decide that they deserved to possess that more attractive spouse. So many kings wouldn't invade other countries if they didn't imagine that the resources in other lands would make them richer. So many people wouldn't try to kill their leaders if they didn't want more power for themselves."

"What do I do when I suspect that my own cousin is plotting against me, sire?" Zahir, who was far more interested in practicalities than philosophy at the moment, wanted to know. "How do I act if I have no solid proof that he is guilty and can't wait for it to come for fear that he'll overthrow me while I do nothing? What do I do if I doubt myself? What if I'm just making Nadir out to be a villain because I can't tolerate him being morally superior to me?"

"Zahir, would you allow your younger sister to marry Nadir now?"

"Aisha probably wouldn't allow me to decide who she wed, Your Majesty," snorted Zahir, somewhat nonplussed by the question, since he didn't see what it had to do with the subject at hand. "If it were up to me, though, no, I wouldn't let Nadir marry my little sister. I don't trust him with her."

"There's your answer," his knightmaster informed him grimly. "If you can't trust him with your sister, you shouldn't trust him with the rest of your people."

"Then I should write to my older sister Laila's husband Hassan, who's on the council, appointing him as my representative instead of Nadir." Zahir sighed. "I should also write to the other council members, explaining that Hassan is to replace Nadir as my representative."

"That would appear to be the best course of action, yes," agreed King Jonathan heavily, nodding.

"But what if I'm wrong about Nadir being untrustworthy?" Zahir pressed.

"Then you will have to live with the fact that you hurt an innocent kinsman by kicking him out of office because of a threat that turned out to be unreal." The king sighed. "Being a ruler isn't easy, Zahir. Anyone who tells you that it is so is either intoxicated by their own power or has never been a leader before. When you're a leader, everyone expects you to find solutions to impossible problems. When you're a leader, your life belongs to your people. When you're a ruler, every decision that you make will hurt somebody. When you're a ruler, you have to constantly decide whether killing one person to save ten others is the right thing to do. When you're a leader, you have to always determine if crushing a few individuals in the name of the general good of society is necessary. When you're a ruler, you're forever asking yourself if the ends you are working for really do justify the means you employ." Here, his knightmaster squeezed his shoulder. "Be aware of that when you make your choice, and also recognize that sometimes not making a decision constitutes making one."

"Last week you were lecturing me for not taking the time to think things out properly, sire," scowled Zahir. "Now you want me to betray my cousin based on a gut feeling of mine."

"Rulers need to think things through, but they also have to rely on their instincts," King Jonathan educated him.

Grumbling inwardly that it was impossible for him to depend upon his instincts when every part of his mind was screaming at him to do a different thing, Zahir rubbed his temples. Finally, he said bitterly, "Fine, Your Majesty. I'll write to Hassan and the other council members tonight. Mithros, I almost hope that Nadir really is guilty of plotting against me, since that would make me innocent."

"I understand." Again, King Jonathan's hand tightened around his shoulder. "All rulers have to do things they wish they never had to do. For what it's worth, I do think that you are doing the right thing in this instance."

This wasn't much of a consolation to Zahir, and so he didn't answer.

After a few moments, his knightmaster said, "Speaking of things we wish we never had to do, I expect you to finish your essay by this time tomorrow evening."

If anything, this depressed Zahir more, and he mumbled, "I thought you'd forgotten about that, Your Majesty."

"You thought wrong, for I'm not in my senility yet, so I'm nowhere near as forgetful as you, Squire," commented the king.

"I'm not senile, either, sire," pointed out Zahir tersely, not in the mood to be teased.

"Of course not." His knightmaster nodded. "I think you've made it plain that you are in the youthful ignorance stage of the life cycle."


	11. Chapter 11

Author's Note: Once again, I apologize for the delay in posting. My professors have recently been swamping me with midterms and essays, and, since I decided that college was more important than fanfiction, I haven't possessed the time to update until now. Hopefully, my schedule will be more merciful and allow me to post the next chapter more quickly, but I cannot make any promises, I'm afraid.

Progress and Prejudice

"Well, now you really get to ride out and fight spidrens without Sarge bellowing himself hoarse at you for your temerity," Keir remarked to Aisha two weeks later shortly before dawn as she prepared to leave with the Rider group she had been assigned to, and Zahir, Keir, and Cait clustered in her mare's stall, saying their farewells.

"This time I'm not fighting any spidrens, Keir, and I can't say I'm too sorry about that, given how close I came to dying last time I went up against them," Aisha reminded him, grinning as though the concept of her own death was as unintimidating as a pleasant summer day while she tightened the straps that attached her saddle to her mare. "All that I'll be doing is helping a coastal village rebuild after a pirate raid. I won't even be battling the pirates. There's no real chance of me getting injured unless I hammer a nail into my own finger."

"Still, I wish I was coming with you," murmured Cait, her tone wistful. "Helping a village rebuild will be loads more entertaining than our training exercises."

"Oh, I don't know about that." As she answered, Aisha's eyes sparkled mischievously. "Sarge's training exercises are rumored to be very realistic. It's possible that you'll see more action in one of them than I'll experience in a week of rebuilding a village."

"It's possible," agreed Cait, her lips twitching upward. "I just wish that I were in a position to find out."

"Soon you will be," Aisha reassured her, extending her hand to clutch the other girl's wrist.

"Yes, just a little less than a year of training left now before I am assigned to a Rider group." As if to suggest that a year was an eon, Cait wrinkled her nose.

"A year isn't very long," Aisha insisted. "Just ask anyone over the age of thirty, and they'll tell you how a year passes faster than an eyeblink."

"Well, may the time fly until we are reunited, at any rate," said Cait, leaning forward and wrapping her arms around Aisha for a moment.

When Cait stepped back, Keir came forward. "Make sure that you don't injure yourself with any hammers," he told Aisha. "I'd hate to see your beauty marred in any way."

Then, before Zahir could disembowel him for compromising Aisha's honor, Keir had kissed Aisha lightly on each cheek. Seeing flames rise on his sister's cheeks, Zahir hoped that she would slap Keir for insulting her virtue, but when she giggled like an airhead, his heart was transformed to stone as he realized that his sister didn't mind Keir's lips brushing against her cheek. In fact, she wanted him to kiss her. She welcomed the attention. Lax Tortallan morality had destroyed her, and she now saw no shame in being kissed on the cheek by a male whom she wasn't related to. Feeling simultaneously nauseated and infuriated, Zahir felt his fists clench and he couldn't decide if he wanted to punch Keir or Aisha more.

"You fool." Aisha's manner was teasing as she pushed Keir away from her. "Don't let your stupidity injure you while I'm away. Remember that some parts of the male anatomy cannot be reattached properly."

Not wanting to imagine exactly what parts of the male anatomy his sister was referring to, Zahir's entire brain was consumed by crimson rage, and he snapped, "Could I speak to my cousin alone?"

When Keir hesitated, narrowing his eyes at Zahir, Cait tugged on his sleeve, muttering, "Come on, Keir. You do know how to walk. Let's not be nosy, and allow them to say goodbye in private."

Before Keir could answer, Cait had dragged him out of the stall. As soon as Cait and Keir were out of earshot, Aisha announced coldly, "If you're going to berate me for accepting Keir's kiss, don't waste your breath."

"Don't waste my breath?" repeated Zahir, staring at her incredulously. "I have every right to berate you for acting like a whore. You're my little sister, and, with Father dead, it's my responsibility to ensure that you marry well. I can't do that if you run around accepting kisses from boys all the time."

"You needn't trouble yourself with that." Aisha's eyes scorched into him. "I can marry well by myself if I decide that marriage is even what I want. As far as the kissing goes, I don't run around accepting kisses from boys all the time. Keir's the only boy besides you who has kissed me since I arrived here."

"He shouldn't have kissed you at all," snapped Zahir, "and you should never have let him get away with it."

"Nonsense," snorted Aisha, waving a dismissive hand. "Keir has every right to kiss me if I want him to do so."

"The whole point is that you shouldn't wish for him to do so, you idiot girl," Zahir snarled. "Since you seem to have forgotten, you're a female. That means you should find joy in your chastity, not in making men lust after you."

"Of course," hissed Aisha through gritted teeth. "A female's worth lies only in her virtue. You are allowed to lust after anyone with breasts, but if I take an interest in members of the opposite sex, that's wrong. If you kiss someone, you can enjoy it, but I am not supposed to take any pleasure in being kissed. How could I possibly forget that you, as a male, are entitled to have all the fun, and I, as a female, am not?"

"You aren't meant to feel desire." Stubbornly, Zahir shook his head. "Good girls don't. Decent women only submit to sexual acts in marriage because it is their duty, not because it gives them pleasure."

"I find it sick that you'd rather force yourself on a female whom you are convinced cannot possibly enjoy what you are doing to her and only tolerates what you're doing because it is her duty to do so than share kisses and other things with someone who actually takes some pleasure in what you are doing," Aisha scoffed, and it was her turn to shake her head in disgust. Then, before Zahir could retort, she asked in a softer voice, "Zahir, when you know I am as passionate as you, how can you imagine that I wouldn't feel the same stirrings toward the opposite sex that you do?"

Not wanting to think that Aisha could feel the same flash of heat surge through her when she gazed upon Keir that he experienced when he looked upon Cait or Myra, Zahir growled, "Close your wretched mouth already. Didn't you learn any modesty from Mother? I can't bear to hear any more of your perverted thoughts."

"You can't bear to hear what I say, because you know I speak the truth," Aisha informed him, and he heard his pulse thundering in his ears.

"I hate you," he snapped, glaring at her, since he knew she was speaking the truth, and he wished she wasn't.

"You do not." Aisha's gaze was somehow both empathetic and uncompromising. "You wish that you hated me, because hatred is easier than love, but you do not hate me. Instead, you love me so much that it tears your heart apart."

"You don't understand what you're talking about." Unwilling to admit that he did love her, and that's what made him surrender to his fear, anger, and possessiveness, Zahir glowered at her.

"I understand all too well," countered Aisha. "I feel the same frustrated love for you that you do for me."

"Mithros knows that I should hate your innards," Zahir scowled, but the fact that he should loathe her for failing to be a proper Bazhir woman didn't mean that he did. The truth was that he loved her despite all her improprieties. Perhaps, if he were to be completely honest with himself, he loved her because of them—because of the way her refusal to conform to what a Bazhir woman should be challenged him. He was truly a masochist, since he loved her because she irritated him by clashing her strong will and pride against his.

"And the Goddess knows that I should hate you for the way you condescend to me," Aisha responded. "I shouldn't love anyone who calls me a whore, which is just plain abusive, but I do love you, even though you are unpardonably rude to me. Love isn't rational, and you can't force yourself to stop loving someone even if you want to. When you love somebody, you always forgive that person for doing the unforgivable."

"You speak as though the two of us were trapped in a mutually abusive and destructive relationship." Zahir rolled his eyes to convey how foolish he found the very idea of this, but his mouth had gone dry.

"Perhaps we are." Aisha shrugged. "Whoever believes that hatred is more dangerous and destructive than love has obviously never loved anybody, but I don't think that we are trapped in an abusive relationship. I reckon that we love each other enough to try to improve one another, and that saves both of us."

Zahir had no clue what this meant, nonetheless how to reply to it, so he pointed out tersely, "If you're determined to compromise your honor by engaging in a relationship with Keir, you should know that it can go nowhere. Even though you don't act like one, you are the daughter of a chief. That means that you can't lower yourself to wed a commoner or a non-Bazhir."

"You are far too serious." Chuckling, Aisha tossed back her hair. "Keir and I are nowhere near getting married. We're just enjoying ourselves by swapping kisses like young people are supposed to do. The Goddess knows that I'm not ready for marriage—all I'm ready for is a bit of fun."

"Listen to the way you talk." Wishing he could cover his ears so that he didn't have to listen to his sister's casual approach to kissing, Zahir shook his head and resisted the temptation to bury it in his palms. "You really do sound like a whore."

"Listen to yourself talk; you really do sound like a scumbag," retorted Aisha. "I am not a whore, and you should be ashamed to call me one. I'm just a young woman trying to find myself in a confusing world, just like you are a young man attempting to do the same thing."

"None of this matters." Unable to continue this disconcerting conversation, Zahir elected to change the subject. "I didn't want to speak to you in private about the sordid details of the sex life I don't even wish to contemplate you having."

"What did you want to talk with me about then?" Aisha arched a dubious eyebrow at him.

Taking a deep breath and trying not to think about the grave injustice he may have committed against Nadir, he told her dully, "I sent a letter to Nadir relieving him of the duty of being chief in my absence, and I wrote to the councilmen, appointing Hassan to serve in my place instead of Nadir. Yesterday night, I received a note from Hassan telling me that Nadir had stepped aside without a protest."

"That's good," Aisha commented, the furrows that had appeared in her forehead when Nadir had first been mentioned smoothing over.

"No, it's not." Glaring at her, Zahir shook his head impatiently. "Nadir stepped aside without a protest, Aisha. That means that I must have misjudged him, because if he cared about power so much he would not have let Hassan replace him as my representative without a fight."

"Maybe." Aisha dismissed this with a shrug. "Perhaps he just recognized that putting up a fight about that would do him no good, so he would conserve his energy for later. You can't assume that he has given up just because he appears to have surrendered to your will."

"Why shouldn't I assume such a thing?" snapped Zahir. "I have no evidence that he is plotting against me, and yet you would have me assume that he is guilty despite this latest suggestion that he is innocent."

"I don't trust him farther than I can throw him on a windy day, and that colors my advice," Aisha admitted, biting her lip. "I trust Hassan far more than I do Nadir, and I think he will make a much better leader than Nadir ever did. Father approved of him, he has been on the council for years, he can fight and hunt well, he cares for his widowed mother-in-law, and I doubt that he has ever so much as raised his voice to Laila. Nobody is as fit as he is to serve as chief in your absence, especially since he is married to Father's oldest daughter."

"Given the contempt you seem to hold so many of our traditions in, I'm astonished that you respect a man as conventional as Hassan," mumbled Zahir bitterly.

"Hassan follows traditions not because he wants to hurt or oppress others, but because he thinks it is the right thing to do. He remembers the customs that work to his advantage, as well as the ones that don't, and I respect that." Again, Aisha shrugged. "I could never have tolerated being married to someone like him, who would expect me to keep his tent tidy, cook his meals, weave his clothing, bear his children, submit my will to his, and have few opinions that didn't come from him. However, that is what Laila wanted in a marriage, and even a blind man could see that the two of them love each other. It's not fair for me to condemn them because what makes either of them happy would depress me, and Bazhir as a people love tradition. A traditional man like Hassan makes a good leader for a tribe; an unconventional young woman like me belongs elsewhere."

"It's not that I doubt that Hassan will make a good leader in my absence." Zahir sighed. "I just wish that the evidence didn't indicate that I had betrayed Nadir. Just as he has obligation to be loyal to me, I have the responsibility to treat him fairly, and I am afraid that I failed to do that."

"He acted as though he was plotting against you." As she established as much, Aisha squeezed his fingers. "You made the best decision that you could with the evidence that you had, and that's all anyone can expect you to do as chief. Besides, you don't know that you were wrong to relieve Nadir of his duties as your representative."

Before Zahir could answer, a harsh female voice shouted, "Two minutes to finish saddling your ponies and get outside, Webspinners, or else you will be left behind. This group waits for no one."

"I've got to go." Hurriedly, Aisha wrapped her arms around him and planted a kiss on each of his cheeks before mounting Tayma in one swift motion. "Mithros bless you, Zahir."

"And you." To cover up for the fact that his throat choked around the words, Zahir spun on his heel and hastened out of the stable before any Webspinner trampled over him in their race to leave the stable.

When he exited, Cait and Keir approached him, Keir noting waspishly, "I see you have finished saying your private farewell to your cousin at last."

"What's that supposed to mean?" demanded Zahir, stiffening at the other young man's tone.

"That I know that it is a disgusting Bazhir custom to wed your own cousin, and that if you are thinking of marrying Aisha, you'll have to fight me first," answered Keir, his jaw flexing.

"Bazhir who marry within their own tribes are no more inbred than Tortallans who wed within their village," snarled Zahir. "If it's incest you want to see, take a look at your own glorious nobility. They're always marrying their cousins. The Conte line breeds with the Naxen one so often that it's amazing our king isn't a drooling maniac. You don't know anything about Bazhir customs, Keir, so don't act as if you do, and don't presume that just because you can't control your lust for Aisha that I will ever see her as anything other than a sister."

"You think of her as a sister?" Slowly, the tension eased from Keir's face, and, a moment later, chagrin replaced it. "I'm sorry I made that remark about your people, Zahir."

"You should apologize." Zahir's lips twisted. "It was horribly prejudiced of you, and, in Tortall, we strive not to have any biases. In fact, the only acceptable prejudice is against those who have any biases at all. That's part of what makes us so progressive and enlightened, you know."

"I said I was sorry," Keir muttered, as though an apology would magically right everything.

"That doesn't negate the fact that you said something prejudiced in the first place, does it? That doesn't make it any less offensive to me that you even thought such things, nonetheless said them, does it?"

"When you don't know about another culture, it's easy to say something ignorant by mistake, and it can be really difficult not to judge other cultures based on your own morality," Cait interjected in a soothing fashion before Keir could reply to this. "Keir didn't intend for his words to be so offensive to you."

"Among the Bazhir any woman who walks around without wearing a veil is called a slut." Zahir fixed a fierce, mocking glance upon her. "As such, if I called you a slut, I'm certain you wouldn't be too miffed by my remark, since the term slut is obviously a compliment among my people, and so my words clearly weren't meant to wound you."

"I can see that this conversation is very emotionally charged." Cait's face hardened. "I think we should end it before anyone says anything else that we'll regret when we've had a chance to calm ourselves."

"Cait's right." Keir strode off toward the practice fields, shouting over his shoulder, "I should run off to training with Sarge now, anyway."

"I should go, as well." Cait watched Keir disappear, and then added, her face gentling, "If you want to discuss what happened when you've calmed down a bit, you can come see me during my precious little free time."

However, Zahir barely processed this, because he was too busy glowering after Keir. "May he be kidnapped by centaurs. He turned my cousin into a whore."

"Don't be melodramatic." Cait's lips quirked. "Accepting a kiss on the cheek does not a whore make."

"Females shouldn't enjoy kisses or anything else of a sexual nature," responded Zahir stiffly, his cheeks burning.

"Kisses aren't so awful you know." Without warning, she was bending closer to him than she ever had before, and, abruptly, he noticed a million things about her that he hadn't detected before, including the streaks in her lively rust-colored eyes, and the strands of copper and brown hair that melded together to create her auburn locks. Before he understood what was transpiring, her lips had puckered into rosebuds, and those rosebuds had touched each of his cheeks for an instant. His nose flooded with a scent of her that he had never even realized existed, Zahir discovered that he couldn't breathe. Laughing as she pulled away from him, she asked, "That wasn't so terrible, was it?"

"Yes, it was," Zahir answered, hoping she wouldn't hear his voice crack. She couldn't know that what made it terrible was that it had been wonderful enough to cause him to feel as lightheaded as a court drunk. She couldn't be allowed to recognize that the fact that it had felt so good was what made it so bad. After all, he couldn't admit to either of them that he desired her, because it was too painful to want what you could never have, and he could never have her. He was a Bazhir chief; the last person he could marry was a common non-Bazhir girl.

"Well, I haven't had much experience with kissing." Cait shrugged indifferently, but there were roses blooming in her cheeks. "You can't expect me to be very good at it."

Before Zahir could be tempted to tell her that her kiss had been so good that it had made flames of forbidden desire lick through him, she pivoted and strode off toward the practice courts. Cursing the fate that had dragged him from his desert, where everyone shared his beliefs and he felt at home among the harsh landscape, Zahir headed back up to the palace.

Not long after that, he was serving breakfast to King Jonathan, Queen Thayet, and several high-ranking textile merchants who conducted themselves as though they were convinced that the most important business of the realm was to ensure that they acquired more money.

"Your Majesties know that when the textile merchants of the realm prosper, the whole country does," said one corpulent merchant whose girth could not be accommodated by his chair, a fact which didn't concern him, if the way he chewed enthusiastically on his sausages was any indication.

"When we are rich, we are happy to donate money to fund Your Majesties' many ingenious projects and reforms," another merchant, this one as thin as a rail and decked out in gaudy robes that screamed that he had more gold than taste, put in, his tone implying that he perceived the monarchs as among his closest personal friends.

"My husband and I remember our friends among the merchants," announced Queen Thayet, inclining her head graciously.

"Your Majesties will understand that much of our money comes from selling textiles made by cloth that was originally manufactured in Tyra," continued the first merchant. "Now, during King Roald's time, the Tyrans would have to ship the cloth into Port Caynn , where the cloth would have to be unloaded and then transported by road or by river to Corus."

"Such activities boost the economy of Port Caynn by providing employment for many," the king observed.

"Yes," agreed the rotund merchant, and Zahir could sense from the man's reluctance that King Jonathan and Queen Thayet weren't supposed to pick up on this point. "Of course, the presence of middlemen decreases our profit by a considerable margin, my liege."

"I imagine that the taxes on imported goods entering ports are rather onerous for you, too," King Jonathan remarked dryly, sipping at the goblet of wine Zahir had just refilled.

"We don't mind the taxes at all, sire," declared the second merchant, his cadaverous features sliding into an unconvincing smile that bore an uncanny resemblance to a leer. "Tax money funds the wonderful reforms and projects that us merchants are very enthusiastic about."

"However, in recent years, the prices that the middlemen are demanding for their services have risen by a great deal," the first merchant explained. "Economics have forced us to look for other means by which the Tyrans could transport their cloths to Corus."

"In essence, you searched for a land route," Queen Thayet concluded crisply, spreading jam on her toast.

"Exactly, Your Majesty." The first merchant's jowls bobbed excitedly as he nodded, and, unfortunately, Zahir, filling his goblet of wine, had a very close view of this. "Looking at a map, it became abundantly plain that a journey through the Great Southern Desert would be a quick route to Tyra that would cut out the middlemen in Port Caynn."

"When King Roald was on the throne, the Bazhir savages would slaughter anyone who intruded upon their hostile, infertile desert." Listening to the second merchant's words, Zahir couldn't prevent his hand from trembling with wrath as he replaced a platter of now cold eggs with a tray of pastries. Thinking that the true savages were those who invaded somebody else's land and asking himself for the nine thousandth time why the northerners had bothered trying to conquer the desert when they saw it as worthless territory, he found that it required an exercise of just about all the self-control he possessed not to voice such comments aloud. "Since Your Majesty-" Here, the merchant nodded at King Jonathan—"subdued the barbarians, we imagined that it would finally be safe and feasible to travel through the desert."

"I did not subdue the Bazhir," King Jonathan corrected, shaking his head. "I made peace with them by learning their customs and becoming their Voice. When I became their Voice, they gave their allegiance to Tortall and to me."

"Of course, Your Majesty. Anyway, what we didn't realize was that the tribesmen were such primitives that in the centuries that they had inhabited the desert, they hadn't figured out how to build any roads," said the fat merchant, chomping away at an apple turnover, and apparently not considering how rapidly any road would be re-conquered by the desert.

"The Bazhir are nomadic." King Jonathan's tone had hardened. "People who do not live in settlements don't need roads. That doesn't make them primitives."

"The wretched tribesmen don't build roads just to spite us," argued the overweight merchant, his massive frame quivering with ire. "They do it so they can charge us exorbitant prices for their insolent guides through the desert. The sand scuts just enjoy robbing us."

At the most derisive term northerners had for the Bazhir, the blood that had been boiling in Zahir's veins ever since the two merchants had begun ranting about the Bazhir burned a path through his body up into his mind. When it reached his brain, the scarlet, blazing fury took over him, and, before he could even think about what he was doing, he was spilling the pitcher of wine he clutched over the fat merchant.

"Be careful, boy," snapped the drenched merchant, pushing Zahir away from him.

"I is terribly sorry, sir." Zahir had never felt less apologetic in his life. "I sure is one clumsy sand scut."

The merchant appeared ready to explode, but before he could do so, the king ordered, "Get a napkin and clean this mess up, Zahir."

"I isn't knowing what a napkin is, sire." As far as Zahir was concerned, the corpulent merchant could remain soaked in wine until the Black God summoned him to his court. "Us sand scuts is so primitive that we isn't having any napkins in the desert at all."

"Go to your room, Squire, and rest assured that we'll be discussing this later." King Jonathan's eyes narrowed, but Zahir couldn't bring himself to care how much trouble he might have brought upon himself with his insolence and defiance. He had reminded the merchants and the monarchs alike that his people did not tolerate being humiliated, and that was all that had mattered. "Myra can take over your serving duties."

Keeping his head high and his nose aloft, Zahir left the dining room. Then, ignoring the sanctimonious glance Myra shot him as she glided past him, bearing napkins and a fresh pitcher of wine, he disappeared into his bedroom.

Once there, he plopped down on the cold stone windowsill, so he could be as close as possible to the weak autumn sunlight streaming in through the glass as morning fed into afternoon. Sighing, Zahir thought that he knew the king would be cross at him—he had dumped a pitcher of wine on a guest and then refused to clean the mess up when commanded—but he didn't particularly care.

As far as he was concerned, his knightmaster had betrayed him by not reacting to the most degrading term there was for a Bazhir and then just ordering Zahir to tidy up the vile merchant when he had defended himself against the merchant's slur. Mithros, he had never been more humiliated in his life.

Well, the king and the merchants could all learn that if they imagined that they had subdued a race as prideful and independent as the Bazhir, they couldn't be more wrong. Even Zahir, who had lived among northerners for years and adopted many of their practices, still had traces of what Tortallans who would be honest about their biases would call a savage. Moreover, he was proud of those elements of savagery, because they made him different from the revolting merchant he had drenched in wine. Yes, Zahir might have been the king's subject, but he wasn't a slave, and he didn't have to tolerate anyone making snide remarks about his people. After all, he was a Bazhir, and the Bazhir were fighters. Anyone who wasn't a fighter couldn't survive in the desert for long, and the merchants could call the Bazhir primitive, but not one of their ostentatious selves could survive a day in the desert without a Bazhir to guide them.

He didn't know how long he sat there, his hot breath forming condensation on the chilled glass, before he began sketching tents, horses, sheep, camels, and veiled women out of the mist on the window. Since the Bazhir were nomadic, this tribe he had drawn would disappear as the day warmed, but, because the Bazhir could never be defeated, the outlines of them would also return the next time condensation collected on the glass.

He had created a sizable tribe by the time a knock sound on his door. Perfectly aware that the person outside could only be the king and absolutely indifferent to that fact, he called as he continued to etch a camel's hump, "Come in."

The door creaked open, and he saw King Jonathan's reflection in the misty glass, but he didn't bother to rise and bow. Any ruler that betrayed him wasn't worthy of his respect. In fact, as far as he was concerned, any ruler who betrayed him could spend eternity tormented in the worst corner of the afterlife.

"Would you care to explain this morning's display?" King Jonathan's manner made it clear that the word display, in this case, was a substitute for "temper tantrum."

"I don't need to explain myself to you," replied Zahir shortly, bristling. He hated when his knightmaster began a lecture by posing idiotic questions. It was as though the king liked to pretend that he wasn't going to pass judgment until he had all the facts when he really had already condemned his squire. "You were there. If you don't understand why I might find the term 'sand scut' offensive, then there's no profit in trying to explain myself to you, Your Majesty."

"Face me when I'm talking to you, and look at me when you answer me. Even if you despise me as a person, you'll show me the respect I deserve by virtue of my rank," King Jonathan snapped.

His words infuriated Zahir so much that he spun around to glare at his knightmaster. The second he did so, he found his smoldering eyes warring with the blue fires sparking in the king's. Apparently, King Jonathan perceived getting his squire to look at him as a victory, for he rapped out, "You're right that I was there. I witnessed you pour wine on my guest, and I demand an explanation for that."

"I is one clumsy primitive." Convinced that his knightmaster could demand all the explanations he wanted but that didn't mean that he would receive any true ones, Zahir kept his expression deadpan as he offered the response that he knew would cause the king to contemplate strangling him.

"Don't speak as though you are uneducated." King Jonathan's voice was harder than granite, and Zahir wondered sullenly why his knightmaster suddenly cared about stereotypes that the Bazhir were savages. "As for your alleged clumsiness, you have surprisingly little of the ungainliness of adolescence, and I don't remember you making any movements that I would classify as anything less than graceful. Besides, if it had been mere clumsiness, you would have cleaned the mess up with a napkin as I instructed you to."

"I is one ignorant sand scut." Zahir shrugged. "I isn't knowing what a napkin is."

"You are not ignorant, Squire, and I won't have you pretending that you are, because it does not amuse me in the slightest," admonished King Jonathan, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. "I also happen to find the derogatory term for the Bazhir offensive, so you will not use it to describe yourself while you are in my presence."

"Of course, sire," Zahir ground out through clenched teeth. "I forgot that it's perfectly acceptable for a northern merchant to employ that term to describe my people, but if I utilize it to describe myself I am being unpardonably crass."

"If, as some of my more feisty friends assure me, a sharp tongue is indeed indicative of a sharp mind, you'll have a hard time convincing anyone that you are anything less than intelligent," remarked King Jonathan dryly, settling himself on Zahir's bed and patting the space next to him. "Come sit beside me."

Eyeing the king warily, Zahir hesitated and then complied. As he sat down, his knightmaster asked, "Do you feel that I didn't respond strongly enough to the merchants' comments about the Bazhir?"

"Yes, I do, Your Majesty," confirmed Zahir, his voice clipped and unabashed.

"I see." Thoughtfully, his knightmaster nodded. "Since I am not answerable to you as you are answerable to me, I am not obligated to explain my conduct to you. However, I want you to understand that I don't condone anything the merchants said about the Bazhir. I know that anybody who calls members of other ethnic groups primitives isn't acting very civilized themselves and that anyone who refers to people of other races as ignorant demonstrates their own ignorance. Rulers do not have the privilege, though, of losing control just because somebody says something insulting. After you left, I made it plain that I do not allow the word 'sand scut' to be spoken in my presence and reminded the merchants that I happen to be Bazhir by adoption. With such people, Zahir, you have to patiently explain to them that the low population density of the desert makes it not cost-effective for the realm to pay for roads to be built through it, and that if the merchants want to use the desert for transporting their goods, they will have to continue dealing with the Bazhir, who they will probably get along with much better once they drop their negative, condescending attitudes. When you are dealing with beings like the merchants my wife and I were dining with, you have to show how something profits them if you wish to persuade them to change their minds. With such individuals, you have to make them understand something, so that they will not come away from the meeting resenting you. Do you comprehend why I acted as I did now?"

For a moment, Zahir paused, biting his lip, since he didn't want to concede that the king's behavior might have been understandable on any level. Then, he mumbled, "I suppose so, Your Majesty."

"Good. Then you can understand why I couldn't permit you to ruin my negotiations with the merchants," concluded King Jonathan crisply.

"I didn't ruin anything, sire." Scowling, Zahir folded his arms across his chest.

"You poured wine all over my guest." The king's arms crossed, as well. "If the man you had dumped wine over happened to be an ambassador, we might be embroiled in a diplomatic nightmare thanks to you."

"He deserved everything he got from me and more, and he wasn't an ambassador, Your Majesty," argued Zahir, sticking out his chin.

"Zahir, you may think that you won your battle with the merchant by pouring wine on him, but you ended up losing it, instead." Here, King Jonathan's eyes pierced into him. "By losing control and attacking him, you made it appear as though you were a savage."

"Defending yourself when somebody insults you shouldn't make you a savage, sire," countered Zahir, his jaw tightening.

"It doesn't make you one, but it makes you _look_ like one." The king's hands clasped his shoulders. "Appearances are important in politics, Squire. As chief, you will be expected to not lose control during meetings when people from other tribes or non-Bazhir make comments that you find offensive. You will have to convince them that you are right, instead of attacking them. No doubt, you will encounter many beings you will wish that you could kill on sight, but you'll have to learn to cooperate with them. That's a large part of being a leader."

"Will I also have to learn to show how unbigoted I am by choosing someone from another ethic group to be my squire just so everyone can see how much race wasn't a factor in my decision at all, my liege?" By now, Zahir's jaw was clenched so tightly that it hurt.

"Your sauciness is not appreciated, Zahir." For a few seconds, King Jonathan glared at him. Then, he asked more mildly, "Do you think that I selected you as my squire just because you are a Bazhir, and I wanted to prove that I had no prejudice against the Bazhir?"

"Yes, sire," Zahir said baldly, nodding. "As you have pointed out several times this morning, I am not ignorant."

"You aren't ignorant, but you are wrong." When Zahir snorted disbelievingly, King Jonathan chided, "Don't be a complete cynic, and listen to me before you decide that I'm lying to you."

"I'm listening, Your Majesty." Chastened, Zahir ducked his head.

"Good." Placing a finger under his chin, his knightmaster lifted his head, so that his skeptical gaze met the king's earnest one. "I picked you to be my squire so that I could train you to be the next Voice."

"What?" stuttered Zahir, blinking in astonishment and positive that either the pressure of kingship had driven his knightmaster into lunacy or his ears were abruptly developing a very rich fantasy life.


	12. Chapter 12

Revelations

"Based on your reaction, I can tell that you heard me perfectly," commented King Jonathan, his wry manner suggesting that he found Zahir's gaping at him humorous.

"Well, if I heard you correctly, that rules out the possibility of my ears suddenly developing a very rich fantasy life, which just leaves me with the option that the pressures of kingship have driven Your Majesty insane," Zahir mumbled, thinking that if he enjoyed being someone else's chuckle fodder, he would have become a court jest instead of suffering through knighthood training. Not that he had gotten any choice about training to be a knight. His father had decided that he was to be a knight, and, form an early age, he had learned not to argue with his father.

"I am not crazy, Zahir." The king shook his head, but Zahir wasn't convinced. After all, a lunatic probably wouldn't realize his own mental instability. "I can choose anyone who is a Bazhir or who is willing to become one as my successor."

"Yes, given that, the fact that you would pick me to the be the next Voice makes you insane, sire," replied Zahir, observing inwardly that he was as prepared to be the spiritual guide of his people as a zucchini was.

"What makes you such a poor selection, Squire?" King Jonathan inquired, arching his eyebrows.

"I'm smart enough to figure out that when a Voice searches for a successor, the question he's asking himself isn't, 'Who wouldn't do a terrible job?' No, the question he's asking himself is, 'Who would do a good job?' Not doing an awful job isn't the same as doing a good job," answered Zahir flatly. "Your Majesty, I don't see anything about me that makes me a worthy successor for you. I mean, I'm not a decrepit senile old man, and I'm not a crying, suckling baby, but both those fall under the category of not-going-to-do-a-horrible job rather than going-to-do-an-excellent job. Besides, plenty of other young Bazhir share those traits."

"You're looking at yourself through your own eyes rather than seeing yourself through my eyes," his knightmaster educated him.

"I thought that I was doing fine with recognizing how insignificant I was to the Bazhir as a whole, sire," frowned Zahir.

"Your calculations failed to take into account the fact that you have been chief of your tribe since you were thirteen," the king explained.

"Oh, and I've done wonderfully at that, Your Majesty," snorted Zahir, who recently had spent a considerable amount of time pondering if he might be the worst chief in Bazhir history. "I killed my uncle. Then, without proof that he was plotting against me, I removed from power the cousin I had appointed to rule in my place. Based on all that, I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't want to give me more authority over people."

"You aren't nearly as bad a chief as you paint yourself." Here, King Jonathan rested a hand on his shoulder. "You care passionately about the welfare of your tribe and worry about what kind of chief you are. As I explained to you before, you have the potential to be a great leader, Zahir. I hope that my guidance will help you reach your full potential, and that your training as the next Voice will show you what it means to be the spiritual leader of the Bazhir."

"Even if I do have the potential to be a great leader as you claim, sire, you're still taking a risk by selecting me as your successor." As he established as much, Zahir's forehead knotted, because he wasn't positive that the leadership potential that his knightmaster glimpsed in him wasn't an optical illusion. "There is the very real chance that, even under you tutelage, I won't develop into the sort of leader that the Voice needs to be, and potential that goes unrealized is potential that might as well not have existed in the first place. With all due respect, it seems foolhardy to risk that failure when there are plenty of excellent leaders among the Bazhir who have demonstrated their abilities rather than just their potential."

"Kings must be gamblers, Squire. If we dream of achieving a glorious success, we must not be afraid to risk dreadful failure. Although a leader must understand the value of caution and shouldn't take chances just for the sake of being daring, a person in authority would do well to remember that very little is accomplished by those incapable of taking chances." King Jonathan's eyes sparkled at him, and he thought that this radical philosophy of his knightmaster's might account for many of the more bizarre reforms that had been implemented in Tortall since Jonathan and Thayet had risen to the throne. "You'll just have to prove that my faith in you was justified, Zahir, and make me win instead of lose my gamble."

"I'll—I'll try, Your Majesty," stammered Zahir breathlessly. He felt as hopelessly entangled by the man's charisma as he had each time King Jonathan had given a speech to the pages at the start of every year of training. Recalling how even those like Joren who despised the king's myriad reforms had gawked at King Jonathan during one of his speeches, Zahir concluded that his knightmaster was the type of man who could tell someone to go to the most painful portion of the afterlife in such a manner that the person would be convinced that they would enjoy the trip. It really wasn't fair that somebody who already wielded so much legal power also possessed a magnetic personality. Then, as an appalling thought rammed into his head with the velocity of a stone hurled from a catapult, he faltered, "Sire, is it true that a Voice receives a vision of his own death?"

"Yes, it is." Grimly, his knightmaster nodded. Fixing his bright eyes on Zahir, he went on, "Some would find the notion of knowing how and when they die terrifying, believing that it would weigh on their mind to carry such knowledge about with them all the time, but I do not feel that being aware of when I will perish is such a horrible thing. In fact, it is comforting to understand that there are certain obstacles that you must survive since it isn't your time to die yet, and the knowledge of when you will die allows you to make plans for your death."

"Yes, Your Majesty." Swallowing the lump in his throat, Zahir decided he wasn't going to contemplate the fact that, if he became the Voice as his knightmaster wished, he would have to handle knowing when and how he was going to perish. Instead, he was going to focus on the idea that had initially unsettled him. "Err…I don't know how to ask this, but…."

"Just ask it," King Jonathan ordered. "Shyness doesn't suit you well at all, Zahir."

"Are you going to be dying soon, my liege?" Zahir burst out, not caring how tactless he sounded, before his tongue decided not to function properly again.

"No, Squire, I will not be dying soon," the king informed him softly. "I shall live a long life, and I will die with my wife, my children, and my grandchildren clustered around me. In truth, I hope that the vision of death that you see will be as peaceful as my own."

Not certain whether he would prefer to die gloriously in battle, in a sickbed with family and friends arrayed around him to bid him a final farewell, or in his sleep without him having to be conscious of his own waning existence, Zahir gnawed on his lower lip until it flooded his mouth with the metallic taste of blood.

"If you aren't dying soon, why do you want to train me as your successor?" he wanted to know once he had forced himself to stop musing upon his own death.

"A Voice doesn't have to wait until he is nearing his death to pass his power onto someone else; it is merely customary that he do so," replied King Jonathan. "For the most part, that tradition makes sense, but sometimes it is wiser for the Voice to have somebody else replace him long before his death, just as it is sometimes more prudent for an aging king to abdicate in favor of his heir."

"You aren't old," Zahir pointed out, thinking that the king's oldest son was only Zahir's age, and that "old" was just about the last word you would use to describe someone as charismatic as his knightmaster. "I don't understand why you want to abdicate your position as Voice."

"In this case, my decision to step aside has little to do with my age." Sighing, King Jonathan said, "You heard the merchants this morning, Zahir. They essentially believe that I subdued the Bazhir to the northerners when the goal of my becoming the Voice was to create a peace between equal cultures. They are convinced that the Bazhir could not govern themselves properly and needed a northern prince to step in to do the job."

"Your Majesty, the merchants don't understand anything except profit," spat Zahir, his fists clenching as he recalled the arrogant ignorance that the textile merchants had displayed. "That's why they start offending people the instant they start discussing anything outside of profit."

"That may be a fair assessment of the merchants we met this morning." There was a wry twist to the king's lips, but his tone was somber as he continued, "Unfortunately, the merchants are not alone in harboring such beliefs, although many people would not express such sentiments aloud, and even when I explain to beings like the merchants how wrong they are, they tend to humor me while still be convinced that they know the truth."

"I could teach them a lesson, sire," Zahir ground out, raising his balled hands so that there could be no doubt that the instruction he mentioned would take a very physical form.

"Perhaps you can, but not with those," responded King Jonathan, pushing his squire's fists down, and Zahir grumbled mentally that his knightmaster took all the fun out of being a trained warrior.

Silence fell between them for a moment until the king spoke again. "The Bazhir deserve a Voice who was born and bred as one of them, instead of made into one by adoption. They ought to have a spiritual leader who sees himself primarily as a Bazhir and who will be perceived by others as primarily Bazhir. The purpose of my being the Voice was to make the Bazhir truly a part of the realm, and that objective has been achieved. Now, the Voice should belong to someone whose main identity is Bazhir. As for the individuals who feel as the merchants do, they will have to start treating at least one person of Bazhir ancestry with respect if the Voice was raised a Bazhir and they want to have dealings in the desert."

"Poisonous mushrooms don't get rid of their venom just by changing their spots—they just camouflage themselves in order to trick people into eating them." Certain that it would be nothing less than a torture to listen to the merchants address him as unctuously as they had King Jonathan, Zahir scowled. "Those merchants were as slimy as mushrooms, too."

"If the Great Southern desert becomes a trade route, the prosperity of the Bazhir would increase," King Jonathan reminded him sternly. "You may not care for the merchants—I admit that I don't—but the needs of your people outweigh your own likes and dislikes. Being a leader often entails working with beings you don't care for in order to improve the lives of your people."

Asking himself not for the first time if being a good leader meant nothing more than totally abandoning yourself for the sake of those you served, Zahir wrinkled his nose. Then, as it occurred to him that he wasn't sure he even had a true self since he was no longer a pure Bazhir but he couldn't blend entirely into Tortallan society, he said, "Your Majesty is aware that I am not really a true Bazhir because I do not follow all the Bazhir customs any more, aren't you?"

"I am." Without warning, the king's eyes lanced into him. "That's why I want you to be my successor as Voice. You were born and reared as a Bazhir, which means that you will always be one at heart. However, you also have lived among northerners for years and have learned how to deal with non-Bazhir, a necessary skill for a Voice given the growing contact between the northerners and the Bazhir. Furthermore, when you are knighted, you will be pledged to serve the Crown, which ties you to Tortall and ensures that the Bazhir will remain a part of this country in the future. In the next Voice, I needed someone who was bound to the Crown but who was also loyal to the Bazhir, and I discovered such a being in you. You belong to both worlds and neither one at the same time, which makes you very useful to me, Squire."

Honestly, Zahir didn't care how useful King Jonathan judged him to be because he was neither a Bazhir nor a northerner. The fact that he no longer belonged anywhere made him miserable, and, if he could, he would alter that in a heartbeat. Maybe his progressive knightmaster wouldn't mind having no true home, but Zahir was a conservative who longed for the serenity that could only emerge from the knowledge that he was living as his ancestors had. As far as he was concerned, modernity just meant loneliness, and he understood that loneliness was the worst emotion at all, since, once it had a grip on you, it never loosened its talons.

"It's a relief to know that my permanent homesickness is profitable for you, sire," observed Zahir, who was unable to prevent the bitterness from lacing his tone, especially because he recognized that the king was right, and that he really never would belong to either the Bazhir or northerner world. Before he was ten, all of the most important Bazhir beliefs had been hammered into his head, so many of them were as natural to him as breathing, and that meant that he valued things northerners did not. No amount of training by non-Bazhir could replace the beliefs that were more a part of him than his arms and legs. Yet, after associating with the northerners for years, he had dropped so many of the Bazhir customs that weren't so deeply engrained in him in favor of northern ones, which made him out of step with the other Bazhir whenever he returned to the desert. Now that he had begun mixing his Bazhir heritage with the northerners, he couldn't mix out the northern bits and go back to being a full Bazhir. That was one of the horrible things about change: once it started, it couldn't ever be truly reversed. "After all, I'd hate to suffer for no reason."

"Being caught between cultures doesn't have to be a curse," King Jonathan answered mildly. "In fact, it can be a blessing, because you can pick the elements you like from each culture and use them to forge a new identity for yourself."

"Some people enjoy that freedom of choice, Your Majesty. My little sister definitely does." His lips thinning, Zahir decided that it wasn't worth mentioning that Aisha had elected to reject a majority of Bazhir customs in favor of northern ones, and, even though he hated her for betraying her culture, he also was happy that she had found the peace among northerners that had eluded him. "I don't. I like the inner peace of knowing exactly what I'm supposed to do, and the external harmony that only exists when everyone fulfills their duties. I enjoy knowing where I stand in relation to everybody else."

"In this country, we are presently redefining where everyone stands in relation to everybody else." The king gripped Zahir's shoulder gently. "Part of that process involves the Bazhir and the northerners reworking how they relate to each other."

"It will be the Bazhir who surrender most of their culture to blend in better with the northerners, won't it, sire?" demanded Zahir flatly. He could spot the trend of the Bazhir assimilation into northern society as plainly as anyone, and, although he despised it, he knew that he couldn't halt it. After all, he noted with a nauseous twist of his innards, he couldn't prevent himself from becoming more of a northerner than he should be.

"That's not my vision for the future of this country," his knightmaster reassured him. Then, because he was a ruler, and rulers inspired, he launched into a description of his vision. "When I imagine the future of the realm, I envision a mosaic. Now, a mosaic contains many different colors and cuts of tiles. None of these colors or cuts is lost by being mixed with another color or cut, which means that each tile retains its own identity. Yet, all the tiles come together to form a beautiful, coherent work of art. To relate that image to Tortall, I want the Bazhir and the northerners to both maintain their respective cultures while cooperating with each other to form a strong realm that is more than the sum of its parts."

Zahir didn't have a clue how to respond to this perspective, which he wasn't positive that he even comprehended, so he commented, "The spiritual culture of the Bazhir would be weakened if I were Voice, Your Majesty. I haven't engaged in the nightly communion in a long time."

"You think that I'm not aware that you haven't participated in the communion with the Voice ever since your father passed away, Squire?" King Jonathan arched an eyebrow.

"Yes," admitted Zahir, who could feel flames beginning to burn in his cheeks. "Sire, if I had hundreds of voices babbling in my head every night, I wouldn't be able to tell one from the next."

"I can hear every unique voice, as will you if you become the Voice," his knightmaster educated him, his tone quiet. "Of course, some voices are clearer than others, and you happen to have a very distinct voice, Zahir. I discovered that when I made you headsman of your tribe, a rite, by the way, that added another link to our bond."

Zahir was saved the necessity of devising a reply to this when the king concluded, "All this, of course, does not explain your refusal to commune with the Voice."

"I never felt comfortable with someone else knowing exactly what was going on in my mind." His neck blazing as well now, Zahir shrugged. "When my father died, I decided that the gods had a habit of ignoring the prayers of mortals, so there was no point in wasting my time appealing to them, especially since prayer has always humiliated me owing to its horrible similarity to begging. Besides, if I wish to pray to the gods, I can do it myself. I don't require an intermediary, Your Majesty, and I doubt you can solve the problems I'd be desperate enough to pray about."

"You don't need an intermediary to pray to the gods, and I can't resolve many of your problems," agreed King Jonathan, squeezing Zahir's shoulder. "However, I have received special training before I became the Voice, and that provides me with a connection to the Divine Realms that others might not have. Also, sometimes the mere action of sharing your troubles can reduce how much they weigh on you, even if no steps have been taken to lessen your burdens. Sometimes it's just a comfort to realize that you are not alone, no matter how much you may feel like you are, and that your suffering isn't as unique as you imagine it to be."

Before Zahir could answer, he felt some warm, ethereal force trying to edge into his head. His first instinct was to let it in, because it seemed friendly. Then, his desire for privacy returned to him, and he erected a barrier in his brain to block out the warm sensation. Unfortunately, the warm sensation built up heat and knocked down the wall he had raised. For a second, the demolishment of the barrier caused streaks of agony to slice through his head. Then, the pain faded, and he found himself melting into an odd jumble of emotions. Suddenly, he felt confident, for some reason he could not have explained even to himself that he was understood by someone even if that person couldn't always approve of his behavior, that somebody had faith that he would really have a bright future, and that someone could be both proud of him and aggravated with him at the same time.

He was starting to fear that he might drown in this ocean of feelings when the warm sensation sailed out of his mind, and he was left to stutter at the king, "What—what did you do to me, sire?"

"I showed you our bond," his knightmaster informed him. Zahir planned to snap that he didn't rummage around in King Jonathan's brain without the man's permission, but his mouth wasn't working properly, and he lost the opportunity to do so as the king asked, "If that's how much I care about you even when you do idiotic things, can you imagine how much more love the gods bear you?"

Numbly, still recovering from King Jonathan's presence in his head, Zahir shook his head.

"Then I shall have to help you understand." The words had barely left the king's mouth before Zahir felt a stronger, hotter sensation pushing for entry into his skull. This time, he managed to stifle the impulse to build a barricade around his head, and the sensation deluged his mind a second later. For one blissful moment, he knew that there was a purpose to his existence, that he was special, that he was connected to all life, that death wasn't the end of everything, that he was loved by the gods, and that there was a reason for his suffering. Then, the sensation drifted out of his head, and he was left with the feeling that he had just survived a flash food.

"Maybe you can connect me to the divine better than I can do myself, Your Majesty," muttered Zahir when enough air had entered his lungs to allow him to speak again.

"Now that you have a more complete understanding of what it means to be the Voice, will you be my successor?" King Jonathan demanded, studying Zahir closely. "Training to be the Voice is difficult and painful in both an emotional and intellectual sense. The ceremony by which one Voice surrenders his power to another Voice is far more dangerous than the one you survived when your father passed on his power as chief to you, and, even being the Voice is a very tiring job. All the knowledge being the Voice entails is wonderful, but you pay a tremendous price for that knowledge, Zahir. The gods require a sacrifice from anyone who would gain even a fraction of their wisdom."

Swallowing hard as he recalled how he had fainted when his father's blood had mingled with his own and he had been lost in a history of his tribe, Zahir declared as steadily as he could, "I'm afraid of nothing, my liege, and, if you want me to serve as the Voice after you, I'll do so."

"Wonderful." King Jonathan lightly slapped his knee. "If I were you, I'd start packing. Tomorrow morning we need to begin our journey to the desert."

"We're going to the desert?" echoed Zahir, gawking at his knightmaster.

"Of course we are." The king laughed. "The Voice must be present for the festivals that begin the month of fasting. Surely you knew that."

"I did," responded Zahir defensively. "I just forgot when the month of fasting would take place this year, since I haven't participated in it for quite some time." Then, his manner became far more wistful than defensive. "I'll be glad to return to the desert. I've missed it, sire."

"I know." His knightmaster nodded at the drawings of a Bazhir tribe Zahir had sketched on the window. "Those make it a bit obvious."

"Oh," mumbled Zahir, who was positive that his face was now on fire. In a desperate attempt to cover up his embarrassment, he asked disjointedly, "So, what's my punishment for dumping wine all over the fat merchant, anyway, sire?"

"I have decided that since the merchant's behavior was puerile, I cannot in fairness discipline you for your immature conduct." Eyeing Zahir seriously, King Jonathan steepled his fingers. "After all, if you hadn't reacted so violently to the merchant's insult to the Bazhir, I'm not sure that I could trust you to be the next Voice."

"But you just said that leaders can't afford to lose control just because someone says something offensive." Astonished, Zahir blinked.

"I did, and I meant it," replied King Jonathan. "However, tempers can be mastered, but passion can never be taught, and if you had felt no compulsion to defend your people, you would never make a good Voice."

"I will never understand you, Your Majesty." Zahir shook his head.

"That's part of my royal mystique," the king remarked, eyes gleaming as he rose from the bed.

He had crossed over to the door and was about to open it when Zahir found himself saying abruptly, "You know, sire, you aren't too awful at this whole knightmaster thing."

"Unfortunately, you happen to be very terrible at flattery, Squire," chuckled King Jonathan. "Perhaps I should have you take lessons in sycophancy from the merchants you love so much."

"There must be laws prohibiting that sort of cruel and unusual punishment, Your Majesty," Zahir grumbled.

"I'm afraid there are not, which means that I can continue to hold that over your head as a threat to make you behave." The king smiled. "Now, if I were you, Zahir, I would get packing."


	13. Chapter 13

Baggage

If the world, as Zahir's father had always insisted, was divided between heavy packers who took a year just to put everything they supposedly needed into bags for a journey and who relied on objects to make them feel at home when they were in a strangle place, and light packers, who could throw everything they needed to survive into a satchel at a moment's notice because they carried their home around inside them, Zahir would have classified himself as a light packer. After all, he was a Bazhir, and he had grown up packing his belongings as his tribe migrated across the desert. Anyone who couldn't pack lightly and swiftly was a burden to his people.

However, as he spent the rest of the afternoon and some of the night packing the clothing and other possessions he would require for his trip to the desert, he faced the discomfiting realization that he might no longer be a light packer. While he was nowhere near as pathetic as many northern nobles who could not travel without carrying a wardrobe or two with them, everything he needed definitely would not fit into a single satchel.

Struggling to close his final bag, Zahir thought as his stomach was replaced by a stone that he had forgotten how to pack like a Bazhir because he had been away from his people for too long.

Of course, it was understandable that he was becoming a heavy packer. His father may have been right when he declared that possessions weren't what created a home and so it was stupid to lug them about to strange places as though they would do so, but Zahir knew in a way that his father never had that sometimes belongings were your only link to your home and your past. Even if objects did nothing but provide you with an illusion that you weren't so far from home as you feared you were, they had to be treasured, since sometimes pretty lies were the only rocks that a being could cling to when drowning in a sea of ugly truths.

The instant this notion occurred to him, Zahir felt his blood freeze in horror. Someone who was taught to abide by the fierce honor code of the Bazhir should never entertain such an ethically repugnant idea…

Oh, but it could be so challenging to adhere to the Bazhir honor code when he was surrounded by people who didn't share or understand his values. It was difficult, he bitterly informed the long dead father who could never have heard him now, to always be a stranger in a strange land. Home was a place—not a defined location like a village, but rather the whole untamable expanse of the desert the Bazhir traveled from oasis to oasis across—and it was familiar individuals—family, friends, neighbors, and enemies. When you didn't have the place or the people, you needed possessions not to make you happy because nothing could make your heart sing when you had no home, but in order to keep the loneliness at bay. You couldn't let the loneliness overwhelm you, or else you would go insane, and, since you had no home, you would have no one to care for you in your lunacy.

Wishing that he had never been placed in a situation where he had to justify his conduct to a deceased person, Zahir decided that he needed to connect with someone to prevent the loneliness from consuming him now.

Regrettably, Aisha wasn't an option, because she was off saving the country from monsters with her Rider group. Garvey and Vinson were on border patrol, and, anyway, given that both of them had bricks for brains, they weren't the sort of individuals anyone halfway intelligent would seek counsel from. Joren, who had been his best friend as a page, was also on border patrol, and Zahir wouldn't have felt comfortable describing his plight to Joren, anyhow. As pages, their entertainment had mostly consisted of hazing first years, their exchanges had mainly centered around mocking others, and their friendship had always contained more than a hint of a rivalry as they each tried to be more graceful than the other. No, even if Joren were at the Royal Palace, Zahir would not have wished to speak with him about his constant homesickness and the impact that had on his packing abilities.

Which left who for him to confide in? He couldn't talk to his knightmaster about it. The king didn't seem to perceive having no home as a curse at all. Instead, he appeared to view it as a blessing in disguise that permitted a person to choose their customs from a buffet rather than having to accept a pre-prepared meal that might contain vegetables or traditions the individual did not want to swallow. It didn't matter to the king that the vegetables or traditions, while distasteful, might have been vital for both the individual and society.

Well, of course, King Jonathan couldn't be expected to understand how it felt not to truly belong anywhere. As ruler of the realm, he was equally comfortable in the desert and in the Royal Palace. He could go from being the northern king to the Bazhir Voice without experiencing any visible identity crisis. If he was pushed off a ship in the middle of the Emerald Ocean, he probably would just have developed gills and transformed himself into a fish—and not just any fish, either, but a majestic shark snugly situated on top of the food chain. In contrast, if a similar thing befell Zahir, he would have drowned because there wasn't so much water in the desert…

Shaking his head to clear it of the images of himself drowning and King Jonathan transfiguring into a shark, Zahir returned to the riddle of whom he could discuss his problem with. Keir wasn't an option, because he was still miffed about Keir's insulting comment about Bazhir mating practices.

Zahir was thinking that he really didn't have enough friends in the world when the solution to his problem smashed into his skull, leaving him dazed that he hadn't spotted the answer the sooner. He could talk to Cait. She had always been friendly to him despite his surliness the day they had first met, and she had said this morning that he should hunt her down during her free time if he wanted to talk…Besides, her lips had been so tantalizingly soft when she kissed him earlier today that it might be a very clever idea to bid her farewell before he headed off to the desert. Not that he was imagining kissing her again, of course. He couldn't afford to envision such a thing. It was best not to dream about things that could never become reality.

Propelled by an overpowering desire to see and speak to her that he didn't dare to name to himself, Zahir hurried out of the palace and across the dark grounds to the Rider barracks. Then, trying not to contemplate his similarity to the love-struck young men in the hackneyed melodramas he hated reading, he scooped up a pebble and tossed it at the window of the room where the female trainees slept.

As the pebble tapped against the glass, he prayed that Cait was one of the girls who slept in the bunks by the window. That was all he had time to hope before there was the sound of the window opening overhead, and a sleepy voice he recognized as Cait's demanded, "What?"

"I want to talk to you," he answered, wishing that he didn't have to shout in order for his words to reach her ears.

"Stop your chirping, lovebirds," a groggy voice snapped from inside the room Cait shared with the other female trainees. "Some of us actually try to sleep during the night, you know."

"I'll be down in a moment, Zahir," Cait called down to him, climbing onto the windowsill and paying no mind to her angry roommate.

"Shut the window," the furious roommate shouted. "I'm freezing in my bed."

"Fresh air is good for your lungs, Sheridan," retorted Cait, as she leapt onto a tree and slammed the window shut behind her.

Zahir watched as she descended branch by branch, her smooth motions providing a clear testament that she had snuck out in this fashion plenty of times. When she hopped off the final branch, she asked, "So, what can I do for you?"

"You said this morning that I could come talk to you in your free time if I wanted." Suddenly, Zahir was grateful that the night prevented her from seeing his face, because he could feel his cheeks flaming.

"You can." A flash of white glistening in the dark let Zahir know that Cait had grinned. "My window is always open to you if you throw a pebble at it. Of course, it would have been nice if you had serenaded me or something."

"Sheridan would have ripped out my lungs before I could get through the first verse," smirked Zahir.

"True." Cait giggled. "The splendors of sharing a room with three other girls are manifold, I assure you."

"Makes me wonder what delights I missed out on because one of the few comforts given to pages is their own rooms," snorted Zahir. "Probably rolling out of the top bunk or being kept awake by the moron on the top bunk who won't stop tossing about."

"Well, I suppose I can't complain about obnoxious roommates too much, given that I am one myself," Cait remarked. "Anyway, it isn't all awful. I mean, at least when you have so many roommates, you never have to worry about being alone, and you always know that you have someone to talk to."

"You're never alone," Zahir repeated, thinking that this definitely was no small thing, especially to somebody as lonely as he was. "Cait, do you ever feel like you don't belong anywhere?"

"Yes," replied Cait after a few seconds' pause. "I reckon everybody feels that way sometimes, Zahir. It's part of life to feel completely alone and friendless every once in a while. You could live in the same village all your life, and you would still suffer with those emotions from time to time."

"With me, it isn't every once in a while." Zahir shook his head. "For me, it's all the time. Cait, when I was little, I had a place among my tribe, and I fit in perfectly. Then, when I was ten, I started page training. I had to learn how to live among northerners, and I had to give up so many of the customs I had picked up as a child among the Bazhir. Even when I picked up these new habits, I didn't mesh with the northerners perfectly, and, worse still, whenever I returned to the Bazhir, I didn't fit in with them either, because I had adopted so many northern traits. It's as if by trying to fit into a different place from the one I was born in, I ended up making it impossible for me to fit in anywhere."

"I understand," murmured Cait, and Zahir couldn't restrain a disbelieving grunt, which caused her to continue indignantly, "You act as though all northerners are the same, Zahir. Yet, they are not. Different classes of northerners behave in different ways, and people from various geographical regions have their own unique customs. When I left my village, I was constantly homesick. I missed seeing the ocean, instead of looking out at the city. I longed to fish with my father, swim with my siblings, and eat my mother's delicious cooking, instead of riding with the other trainees and getting barked at by Sarge all day. I wanted to sleep in a bed with my sisters, and not in a room filled with strangers. Then, I started to make friends among the other trainees, I learned to tolerate the food in the mess, and my riding skills improved. Once I began to fit in, I didn't think about my home as much, but when I do let my mind wonder back to my village, I get quite depressed. You see, I know that since I haven't swam or fished in ages, I will not be able to perform those tasks as well as I used to be able to do, and that when I learned to speak like the rest of the Riders, I lost some of the dialect of the people who live along the coast. By going somewhere else and learning new skills and customs, I lost some of the old skills and traditions that had been a part of me. I'll never be the same person as I was when I left my village, and it hurts to know that."

"Nobody should ever leave their homes," Zahir muttered, convinced that he and Cait should never have endured the anguish they had when they left their families.

"Nonsense," blustered Cait. "Life would be terribly boring if everyone stayed where they felt comfortable. It's nice to live where you know everybody and everything has been done in the same fashion for centuries, but the outside world is very exciting. Besides, how would you ever learn what you truly valued unless you traveled and saw what other people believed was important? When you go to new places, you discover that while some parts of you change, other aspects of your personality remain constant. Those elements of you that stay the same let you know what really matters to you and forms your inviolate self."

Rapping her finger against his chest, causing his heart to pound at her touch, she concluded, "You have an inviolate self right here, Zahir. That inviolate self is something you carry with you wherever you go, and it is your real home."

"I'm lonely because nobody has the same inviolate self as I do, which means I belong nowhere," Zahir grumbled, despising himself for falling into her philosophical mumbojumbo.

"No one ever has the same inviolate self as anybody else." Cait chuckled. "Everyone is unique, and in that we are all the same. Everybody is alone, and in that we are all united."

"I would be less lonesome if I had never left the desert," argued Zahir, his arms crossing.

"Yes," Cait agreed crisply, "but you also would never have met Keir, me, or any of your friends among the squires if you hadn't come to the palace. You never would have set foot in Corus, fought spidrens, or become the king's squire. Your life would be a lot less interesting, and your mind would be much more closed. That's a high price to pay."

"Maybe for you." Zahir shook his head. "Not for me. I wouldn't have been upset if I had remained in the desert for my whole life."

"Perhaps you wouldn't have, but that would only be because you wouldn't know what you were missing by staying there forever," pointed out Cait, squeezing his hand. "We don't really lose anything by leaving the place where we were born and raised. We keep the traditions that matter to us, and we never forget the people that we loved. We just meet new people that we care about and discover new customs we want to follow. Everyone and everything we encounter becomes a part of us, and so we never really lose anyone or anything."

"The point of having traditions is that you can't pick which ones you want to abide by." Zahir rolled his eyes, thinking that most northerners didn't understand the complexities of tradition, which was why most of them advocated violating it at every conceivable opportunity.

"Believe whatever you wish," sighed Cait. "Just remember that you're never going to be the same person you were when you left the desert, so maybe it's better to think of what's happening to you as growth rather than deterioration."

"It's easy for you to say." Zahir flared up. "You chose to leave your home. I didn't. I only trained to be a knight because my father ordered me to."

"You still chose to leave your home." Cait's fingers tightened around his. "It was your decision to obey your father."

"That comment just shows how much you don't comprehend about the Bazhir," scoffed Zahir. "If I had refused to go to the Royal Palace to train as a page, my father would have beaten me with a rod until I agreed to do so. Bazhir children don't disobey their parents, and if I had continued to defy my father, he would have disowned me. Then, I would be forced to leave the Bazhir in disgrace, my father would have no heir, and the tribe would have to find another future headsman."

"That's sick." Cait's tone was shaky, and he could feel her shivering. "Beating and disowning a child just because he won't go down the path you have selected for him is just wrong."

"No, it isn't," countered Zahir tersely, remembering how many times his father had beaten him for his stubbornness, and how many extra blows he had received for crying during a beating because only girls were allowed to show weakness until he had learned to sob silently. "That's the way it has to be, Cait. A disobedient child must be punished, and anyone who doesn't understand the importance of fulfilling the duties of their place in society or of sacrificing their own wishes for the general good doesn't deserve to live among a tribe of people who must cooperate or die. Children should obey their parents, just as wives should obey their husbands, and men should obey their chiefs. Nothing but chaos results when people forget their place, and everyone thinks that they are in charge."

"People have rights," hissed Cait. "They deserve the chance to make up their own minds."

"You northerners are always babbling on about freedom." Dismissively, Zahir waved a hand. "What you don't understand is that your precious freedom is nothing more than putting your desires above the needs of your family, and abandoning your obligations for ones you think are more pleasant as though duty was something devised to bring you joy, instead of something that had been created to help others. Freedom is just a word northerners use when they can't admit that they are being selfish and irresponsible."

"You don't think that it's a bit selfish to expect someone else to sacrifice their rights for you?" retorted Cait.

"I don't think anyone has the right to abandon their duties or their families," announced Zahir, lifting his nose loftily.

"Well, I don't believe that anybody has a right to control someone else's life," Cait responded crisply. "Obviously, we'll never agree, since where you see the group injured by the whims of the individual, I see the individual crushed by the dictates of the group."

"I didn't come here to argue with you." Shaking his head in embarrassment, Zahir wondered why he always had to drive off with his argumentativeness anyone who tried to become close to him. "I—I came here to say farewell. Tomorrow morning I'll be leaving to attend the three days of festivals that precede the Bazhir month of fasting, so I won't be seeing you for awhile."

"I'm glad to hear that you're visiting the desert." Cait's manner softened again, and Zahir was relieved to see that he hadn't managed to create a rift between them yet. "I wish I were coming with you, actually."

"You do?" Zahir couldn't keep the shock out of his voice.

"As I said, I love travel, because it strengthens the inviolate self," said Cait. "Besides, I've heard that there are some amazing creatures in the desert, and I would like to see them one day."

Zahir knew that he should have pointed out that it would be unwise for a female warrior like Cait to roam around the desert, but, because he was imagining how wonderful it would be to show her around the desert, he whispered in her ear, "I hope that you come to the desert with me one day. I'd show you everything. I'd take you to all the coldest oasises. I'd let you see how prickly the cacti really are. I'd show you how funny the camels look with all the humps in their backs to store water. I'd let you ride our horses, which are the fastest in Tortall. I'd teach you how to pick up the snakes and scorpions so you don't get bitten or stung."

"I'd like that." Cait's lips danced against his ear as she murmured her response, and Zahir longed for her to be kissing his ear, instead. A murmur was so close to a kiss without being one that it really wasn't fair. "I want to see as much of the world as I can before I die, and I wouldn't mind having you traveling alongside me."


	14. Chapter 14

Summons

It didn't take Zahir long to discover that he hated traveling with the king and queen. In all fairness to them, it wasn't exactly their fault that traveling with them was one headache after another, since it wasn't their personalities that made it so. Rather, it was their rank and all that was attached to it.

Naturally, monarchs couldn't move around their realm without several advisors, a cavalcade of opulently dressed courtiers whose whole life seemed to be dedicated to waiting for the king or queen to speak so that that could simper an agreement with everything that came out of the ruler's mouth, servants of every imaginable type, a Rider group, and two squads of the King's Own for security purposes, not to mention the commander of the Own. Then, of course, the legions of nobles and even some of the servants had to have their own servants.

All those people had luggage, and all that baggage bogged down the whole process of traveling. Indeed, although the plan had been to depart the Royal Palace shortly after dawn, the sun had almost completely risen before the entourage was finally riding out of the castle gates.

By the time the procession left the palace, Zahir was already tired of entertaining himself with his thoughts, which mostly consisted of unfavorable mental comments about how slowly northerners moved when compared to the nomadic Bazhir, who could relocate whole tribes in the time it took one noble to pack his belongings.

As his inward griping had ceased to amuse him, he glanced around him for someone with whom it looked like he could have a promising conversation. When he found no one, he scowled at his saddle horn. Of course, among the dozens of beings the king would drag across the country, not one of them would be Zahir's age…

His misery only increased as he stared around at the barren trees that indicated that winter, his least favorite season which didn't even exist in the desert, was approaching. Oh, and it definitely was nearing, he noted bitterly, shivering, as the wind whipped at his cloak and the gray clouds began dropping a heavy rain that was more a sleet than anything else. Anyone who complained about the merciless heat of the desert had obviously never experienced the cold cruelty of a northern sleet hammering what felt like a million nails a second into your back. Even the thickest cloak couldn't keep you comfortable in those conditions.

"I'm so glad that I'm heading to the desert at this time of year," said a voice that was far too upbeat given the chilly wind tearing through Zahir's bones and the sleet pounding onto his shoulders.

"At the rate we're going, we might not reach the desert until spring," Zahir grumbled, as the speaker, a young man who appeared to be around fifteen, rode up beside him, and he mentally revised his assessment that there was nobody around his age to talk to. There was, in fact, somebody around his age to converse with. Sadly, however, that individual happened to be obnoxiously cheery during rainstorms, which didn't make him good company.

"This morning we were moving slower than a snail slogging through honey," admitted the boy, grinning so that his white teeth shone against his cheeks, which were ruddy with the cold. "I think we have picked up our pace slightly since then, so your guess might be a little pessimistic."

"I think you are too optimistic," Zahir snorted, rolling his eyes. "Next you'll be saying that we'll be able to convince their Majesties to permanently move their court to Persopolis."

"It's worth a shot." Sweeping a coma of soot black hair away from his forehead, the other young man shot a sideways glance at Zahir. "You're a Bazhir, aren't you?"

"Of course I am," answered Zahir in a clipped tone. "We all look alike, don't we?"

"No, you don't. I didn't mean to imply that at all." His ivy eyes earnest, the boy shook his head. "The Bazhir are an ethnic group, and ethnicity doesn't necessarily refer to a person's race. People from the same ethnic group can belong to the same race, but they don't have to. As long as people share a common culture, they are considered an ethnic group."

"Do you want a medal for offering the most meaningless progressive speech I've heard all day?" Zahir wanted to know.

"Sorry if I sounded pompous," his companion replied. "Pomposity is one of the occupational hazards of training to be a diplomat, I'm afraid. Anyway, what I meant is that you can't necessarily tell just by looking at someone whether they are a Bazhir. After all, you'd never guess just by looking at them that the king, the commander of the Own, and the King's Champion were all Bazhir."

"The King's Champion hardly counts as a real Bazhir." Contemptuously, Zahir's lips curled. "She rides and fights like a man without wearing a veil, which means she obviously doesn't appreciate Bazhir values. She also wasn't born one of us, and she wouldn't have been adopted if the Bloody Hawk didn't have such odd notions. The Bloody Hawk are so crazy that they are one of the few tribes that elect their headsman. As for Lord Raoul, he loves living in our tents and respects our knowledge of horses, which helps him relate to us better than the King's Champion ever could, but still I don't think that he defines himself as a Bazhir."

Privately, Zahir wondered if the Voice even defined himself as a Bazhir, but that wasn't a doubt that he could share with an outsider, especially one he had just met.

"It's good to have a Bazhir around to explain the culture to me," answered the young man. "I love learning as long as it's not out of books, which are so much more boring than real life experience. Besides, my mentor, Lord Conan of Linshart, insists that interacting with Bazhir will teach me many valuable lessons in diplomacy that I will be able to draw on when I negotiate with ambassadors and rulers in foreign countries."

"So I'm just a way for you to cheat on your homework," Zahir snickered, but, despite himself, his heart was softening toward this other teenager.

"I attended the university for four years." His companion chuckled. "If I learned anything there, it was the value of cheating. To be fair to you, though, I'll let you cheat off me when necessary. That was how we operated at the university."

"That's how we did it in page training when we were learning to be honorable knights of the realm." To his surprise, Zahir smiled, although he promptly regretted doing so when a gust of air blew sleet into his mouth. "I'd always borrow my friend Joren's reading homework, and he'd always borrow my mathematics work. It all balances out in the end, and I know because I was the one who could actually complete the math work."

"Page training." The other boy wrinkled his nose. "That always sounded like it was all sweat and no fun when my older brothers described it. I'm glad that I was a third son, and so there was no problem with my going to the university before going on to become a diplomat."

"Page training isn't that difficult," scoffed Zahir, so that he wouldn't have to confess that he would never have entered knighthood training if his father hadn't ordered him to do so. "I mean, even a girl can do it."

Except, of course, the most aggravating thing about Keladry the Lump of Mindelan wasn't that she was doing a man's work by training to be a knight. No, the worst thing about her was that she was good enough at page training that she had beaten Zahir and his friends by surviving the intensive hazing they had inflicted on her during her probationary year. When she was skilled at yard work, she appeared right when she couldn't be more wrong, and that was the most unfair, most insulting thing about her.

"Believe me, the realm is better off without me blundering around in armor." Sticking out a hand, the young man added, "By the way, I'm Trevor of Marsh."

"I'm Zahir ibn Alhaz, the king's squire," responded Zahir, shaking Trevor's hand.

"Being the king's squire must be exciting," Trevor remarked. "I'll bet you learn all sorts of interesting stuff about government and other cultures."

"Being the king's squire isn't as dull as I feared it would be, but I don't find the things you mentioned particularly interesting," commented Zahir. "I even hate learning to restrain myself from pouring wine all over fat, rude merchants."

"Learning not to dump wine all over insolent guests isn't that hard," Trevor informed him, smirking.

"If you don't remark upon my atrocious diplomatic skills, I won't point out how you ride like a sack of potatoes," retorted Zahir, who had observed that his companion's riding form left much to be desired.

"Surely I'm not that awful." Trevor's ruddy cheeks turned even redder, but he was beaming.

"You're right; you're worse," Zahir said in a faux consoling tone.

"I told you that I'm so uncoordinated that the realm would have no use for me as a knight," Trevor reminded him. "Even my father, who wanted a third knight in the family, had to concede that in the end."

"My father would have thrashed me to a pulp if I said I wouldn't go through knighthood training," muttered Zahir.

"You didn't want to be a knight?" Trevor asked, fixing keen green eyes on Zahir in a manner that informed him that he hadn't been able to prevent the regret from tingeing his voice.

"It doesn't matter what I wished or didn't wish, because my desires didn't and don't make a difference, and here I am." Zahir shrugged, remembering his conversation with Cait last night. "Among the Bazhir, sons obey their fathers. My people do their duty instead of choosing what they want to do with their life. My people know that they are as a grain of sand in a desert, which means that individually they are nothing, but together they are everything."

"You must think I'm incredibly selfish to insist on doing what I want in life, even if it might contradict what my father would have wished me to do," mused Trevor.

"And you must regard me as foolish for not choosing my own path," countered Zahir, thinking that he had gotten the impression last evening that Cait viewed him in such a fashion. "Since you seem to be one of those people who loves the idea of seeing the world before you snuff it, you'll probably perceive me as an even greater idiot when I tell you that if I had been able to do what I wanted I never would have left the desert."

"I would be bored if I never left my home," Trevor answered. "However, I respect your right to prefer to stay home. It's not fair for me to look down on you just because you would rather not travel."

Disconcerted, Zahir observed inwardly that Trevor was more accepting of him than Zahir was of himself. In order to conceal his discomfiture, he changed the subject by remarking, "There aren't that many people around our age on this journey. That's a shame."

"Yes, I've only seen two Riders that appeared near our age, and then there is a young standard-bearer, Lerant, for the Own, but he wouldn't talk to me," commented Trevor. "All he said was that he was too busy guarding Lord Raoul to indulge in idle chatter. He acted as though bandits were about to ambush us."

"As if any bandit worth his salt would choose to attack the Commander of the Own instead of some flighty court lady when ambushing this party," Zahir snorted.

After that, the two of them continued to talk until the entire retinue stopped at an inn when the strength of the sun struggling to shine through the oppressive thunderheads suggested that it was around noon. Although everyone from the royal train all cramming into the dining room meant that Zahir and Trevor had other people's elbows jabbing into their ribs from every angle, Zahir was grateful for the warmth being smashed up against everybody provided, not to mention the fact that, thanks to the roof over his head, there were no more nails of sleet pounding into him.

Normally, he would have been reluctant to consume the stew, which had the smell and consistency of swamp water, but the steam emanating from the bowl along with the stench convinced him to eat the meal quickly. As Zahir shoved one spoonful of stew after another rapidly down his throat, so that the food would heat him but he wouldn't have to taste it, Trevor bit into the stale wheat bread they had been served along with their stew, battled to chew and swallow the hunk of bread, and whispered to him, "Eating this bread is like chewing a rock. I hope I don't crack any of my teeth."

"It's times like this that call for dipping," announced Zahir, dunking his bread into his stew to soften it before biting into it. "If you had gone on training exercises as a page and learned how to eat hardtack, you'd know these things."

"At the university, we were taught that dunking isn't polite." Despite his words, Trevor dipped his bread into his stew.

"Pages learn that, too, but they also learn that desperate times call for desperate measures." As he established as much, Zahir popped the last of his bread into his mouth and resumed eating his stew.

"All that diplomats learn is that it's a terrible breach of etiquette to not eat all the food you are served, and that, even if the food makes you want to gag, you must compliment it to your hosts if they inquire as to how you enjoyed your meal," mumbled Trevor.

"Another reason for me to despise politics." Zahir rolled his eyes. "I've heard that in Tyra snails are considered a delicacy. Imagine having to eat a plateful of them and then having to praise them to your hosts."

"Since snails are regarded as a delicacy, you'd probably only have to eat one or two of them without vomiting before complimenting your host on the delectable appetizer," Trevor pointed out, as some members of the royal entourage began to move toward the door.

"It's the without vomiting part that could pose a problem, as well as the bit about lying through your teeth about loving the taste of snails," snorted Zahir, while Trevor finished his meal, and the pair of them waded through the throng toward the exit.

Not long after that, they were back on their horses, and then, after a briefer delay than the one that had occurred before the procession departed the Royal Palace, the retinue rode away from the inn. For the rest of the afternoon, as the faint light the sun emitted gradually weakened and the sleet showed no signs of relenting, Zahir and Trevor entertained themselves with riddles.

Finally, as the pewter gray clouds darkened as night fell, the entourage stopped at Sweetspring castle. Here, thank Mithros, there were hostlers to take charge of their mounts, and a hot meal that was more filling and more edible than the one provided at the inn in the spacious castle dining hall. Then, there was a somewhat harried manservant to escort him down a honeycomb of passageways and up a warren of stairwells to the room that some clerk had decided to assign him to share with Trevor.

When he entered the chamber, he saw that it was narrow, cramped with oak furniture, and drafty despite the faded tapestries hanging on the stone walls that were intended to reduce the chill in addition to offering decoration.

"I guess that apprentice diplomat and king's squire rank very low on the great pole of status," grumbled Zahir, dumping his satchel on the floor and sitting down on his side of the bed.

"Well, King Jonathan and Queen Thayet who have probably been given the lord and lady of the castle's chambers, definitely outrank us." Trevor counted off on his fingers as he said each name. "The Knight Commander of the Own, who has probably gotten a room near the king, ranks above us. All the advisers and courtiers swarming the monarchs all day outrank us and most likely received their own chambers. The members of the Own and most of the Riders rank above us, but since they sleep in the guardhouse, they didn't steal any rooms from us, bless them. However, as lowly as we are, we outrank the legions of servants that accompanied us, so we can be grateful that we have a room with a bed, because most of the servants will be sleeping in the stables or on the floor in the dining hall."

As he finished his speech, Trevor lit a tallow candle that was placed on the nightstand. Then, he pulled out a quill, a bottle of ink, and a roll of parchment. Over the sound of his quill scribbling on the parchment, he told Zahir, "I like to have a journal, since it affords me the illusion that I have an exciting existence. If you want to go to sleep and I'm keeping you awake with the candle, just say as much, and I'll blow it out."

"I don't mind the candle," Zahir answered, as it suddenly occurred to him that it was time for the communion with the Voice. Ever since his father had died, he hadn't partaken in the rite, but the memory of the serenity and the certainty that had suffused him when the king had entered his head the day before made him want to participate in the ritual. At the very least, he should join in the rite, because King Jonathan had selected him as the next Voice…

Yet, a fraction of him was still hesitant about taking part in the ritual. Communing with the Voice would involve opening himself up to the Voice, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to allow anyone that sort of access to his heart and his mind. If he revealed his true self, there was the chance of being rejected entirely because of the pettiness and the ugliness of his soul. Anyhow, becoming one with the Voice entailed losing himself, and he wasn't positive that he wished to do that. After all, if he lost himself even for a short time in the ritual, he might never find himself again.

_It's not as though the king hasn't seen you lash out at the slightest provocation, and it's not as though you aren't lost already,_ he snapped at the elements of doubt within him. _As this point, communing with the Voice can scarcely make anything worse and might just improve some things. Wouldn't it be nice if some stuff finally started getting better instead of worse? _

Taking a deep breath as if he were about to dive into the ocean, Zahir closed his eyes, and, before the doubts could overwhelm him again, joined in the communion with the Voice. The instant that he opened his mind to the Voice and to the hundreds of other Bazhir participating in the rite, he nearly drowned in the sea of voices. It would take some time to become accustomed to the flood of praise and problems that deluged his brain during the ritual. Mithros, he had forgotten what a din communing with the Voice was. He had forgotten how it was impossible to distinguish any one voice, except that of the Voice itself, from another.

Of course, he had also forgotten that it wasn't necessary to distinguish the voice of any Bazhir. All that mattered was that the Bazhir were releasing all their troubles, their fears, their hopes, their successes, and their failures. All that mattered was that the Voice was listening to them. All that mattered was that in this ritual the Bazhir became one, and, suddenly, nothing that happened to any individual was truly significant. When the Bazhir communed with the Voice, they were outside of time, and they connected with every Bazhir in the past, present, and future. When the Bazhir communed with the Voice, their obstacles, their triumphs, their anxieties, and their dreams combined into one glorious song that soared to the peaks of mountains before plummeting to the depths of the lowest canyons. Their song was life, and it was eternal. As long as a Bazhir could commune with the Voice, he could become one with his people, and, as long as he could become one with his people, he was home.

The idea that his home was far more than the desert and couldn't be lost no matter how long and how far away he was from the desert caused tears to prick Zahir's eyes. Before his heart, which seemed to be beating at twice its normal rate, could recover from this revelation, he heard the clear, commanding tone of the Voice instructing him, _"Come to my chambers after communion is over, Zahir." _

The shock of hearing the Voice speak directly to him yanked Zahir out of the rite. Breathing heavily, he opened his eyes and stared at the tapestries on the stone wall nearest him as if he believed that they would answer all his most pressing questions. Had the Voice actually addressed him? Was he imagining things? Should he go to the king and risk being thought insane? Should he ignore the order and disobey a command that could have been real?

I loathe spiritual tests, Zahir griped to himself, grateful that Trevor was so engrossed in his writing that he hadn't detected Zahir's anguish.

Remembering that it was one of the primary duties of mortals to come to the gods when they were called to do so and reasoning that a similar logic had to apply to the summons of the gods' representatives, Zahir climbed out of bed, grunting, "Trevor, I'm going to the kitchens to get some tea. I'll be back soon."

Then, before his roommate could reply, he hurried out of the chamber into the icy corridor. Rubbing his palms together, he walked toward the main wing of the castle where he assumed that his knightmaster's quarters were located and tried not to think about how when the gods called mortals they were generally summoning the aforementioned mortals to suffering and sacrifice. Of course, all that suffering and sacrifice was wonderful if you dreamed of becoming a martyr, but if you didn't, it was rather terrifying…

After asking a guard for directions to the king's rooms and giving his name to the herald stationed outside King Jonathan's chambers, Zahir found himself entering his knightmaster's quarters. As soon as he stepped inside, he temporarily forgot his anxiety over whether he was about to seem like lunatic for acting on a summons from a voice in his head. Looking around at the plush sofas, engraved tables, thick carpets, colorful tapestries, and roaring fire in the hearth, he suspected that his knightmaster had indeed been placed in the lord of the castle's typical rooms.

"Yes, Zahir?" King Jonathan glanced up from a report he was reading, and his squire recalled with a sinking sensation the most likely imaginary command that had brought him here.

"You summoned me, Your Majesty?" Zahir posed this as a question because he figured that a being who displayed uncertainty about receiving an order from a voice in his head seemed less insane than someone who was confident in his delusion.

"I did indeed," the king confirmed, putting the report down on a coffee table and gesturing for Zahir to take a seat on the divan next to him. "I was happy that you chose to participate in the communion with the Voice tonight."

Personally, Zahir didn't think that scaring him out of his mind was the best method of expressing pleasure. Alarming him would just make him less likely to partake in the ritual in the future.

"Why did you summon me that way, sire?" His tone was more indignant than he had intended, and his hands were sweaty from being too close to the flames in the hearth.

"I want to begin training you to be my successor as Voice," his knightmaster explained. "Yet, I couldn't truly begin training you until you are willing to open yourself up enough to participate in rites like the nightly communion with the Voice. I couldn't begin subjecting you to the trials of training to be the Voice unless you had enough faith to obey me when you could only hear me in your head. Instruction can only happen when the teacher is ready to teach and the student is prepared to learn."

"You could have scared me so much that I would never wish to commune with the Voice again, sire." Zahir shook his head.

"I could have sacred you away for awhile, but eventually you would have tried to commune with me again, and, eventually, you would have chosen to follow my summons," corrected King Jonathan mildly. "I am not in a rush to train you, since I will not be perishing soon. That means that I can afford to be patient with you, Zahir."

"You speak as if I'm a wild horse you have to gain the trust of before you can approach me, Your Majesty." Zahir scowled.

"That's how you treat anyone you wish to help develop spiritually." King Jonathan smiled. "The supernatural makes people uneasy. That's why at a dull party you can always bring up the topic of religion and watch other guests surge to life, abruptly remembering important appointments to have their teeth pulled."

"I thought I was crazy when I heard you talking to me in my head." Convinced that his knightmaster wasn't taking this seriously enough, Zahir deepened his glower. "I thought that you'd believe I was mad when I came to you because a voice in my head ordered me to do so."

"You aren't insane." Gently, King Jonathan squeezed his shoulders, and he felt his anger die away. "When I hear the voices of Bazhir in my head on regular basis, I am not going to call you crazy for hearing my voice in your head, Squire."

Zahir didn't know how to respond to this, especially since he now seemed silly for fretting about the king viewing him as insane for hearing the Voice speak to him in his head, so he remained quiet. After a moment's silence, his knightmaster continued, "You have the tendency to stress yourself out needlessly. For instance, yesterday evening you were panicking because you thought you were packing too heavily-"

"Your Majesty, you weren't supposed to know about that," muttered Zahir, who wanted nothing more than to be gobbled up by the carpet at that moment in order to be spared the humiliation scorching through him now.

"As a general rule, I construct barriers around my mind, so that voices of the Bazhir do not constantly distract me from my work. I remove those barriers during the communion with the Voice, but even with those walls in place I can still feel if a Bazhir is distressed. The more familiar I am with a particular Bazhir and the closer geographically a given Bazhir is to me, the less distressed that individual has to be to break through my barriers. You happen to be both familiar to me and geographically close, which means that you do not have to be too distressed in order for me to sense it," said King Jonathan.

Listening to this, Zahir didn't know whether it was more unfair that he had a knightmaster who could read his mind, which meant that he had no privacy, or that the king could never be alone even in his own head, since the anguish of random Bazhir must be forever intruding upon his solitude.

"That means that I could feel you angsting over the manner in which you were packing," the king concluded, his eyes piercing into Zahir.

"I suppose that my minor breakdown over how I packed must seem ridiculous to you, sire." Studying the scene of the wolfhounds overpowering a hapless doe in a hunt that was woven into the carpet beneath his feet, Zahir thought that even he was starting to be amused by his own patheticness in regard to the whole packing issue.

"The suffering of others will never be a source of entertainment for me," his knightmaster educated him. "I do realize that, given the nomadic lifestyle of the Bazhir, packing is more important to someone of Bazhir ancestry than it is to a northerner."

"It still has to appear to you, Your Majesty, that I made a mountain range out of a molehill," mumbled Zahir, wishing that the fires in his cheeks would burn themselves out soon.

"Zahir, I respect the fierce code of morality you have that makes you very worried about the rightness or wrongness of every action you or anyone else takes, because every action anybody takes does matter." Steepling his fingers, King Jonathan paused before going on, "That being said, some things are less crucial than others. Not everything is monumental, and sometimes by treating everything as such we make our lives more difficult than they have to be. Every mistake will not result in a catastrophe, and every change will not bring the world crashing down around our ears. When you understand that much of your unhappiness stems from the unreasonable expectations you sometimes have and your difficulty with keeping things in proportion, you will start to become free of those traps. As you do so, you will see that there are times when you should remain firm, and other occasions when it is better to compromise."

Wondering if he would feel more comfortable with the fact that his sister was a Rider and didn't wear a veil if he began to learn to let things go, Zahir swallowed and nodded. "Yes, sire."

"Good. Now let's get down to the business of training you." Briskly, the king asked, "You do know the creation story, don't you?"

"Of course." Zahir bristled, because every Bazhir father had a duty to instruct his children in that tale, and his father had not neglected that responsibility. "In the beginning, there were only the gods and the goddesses. The gods and the goddesses chose to create the world, so they formed the lands and the seas that comprise our world. Then, out of the cold blackness of space, they lit a gigantic fire to illuminate the world—that was the sun. After that, they lit smaller fires—the moon and the stars—to illuminate the world at night. When they had done that, they made the plants and animals to enjoy the lands and the oceans of the world. Then, Mithros created a man in his image, and the Mother Goddess built a woman in her image. Mithros and the Goddess designed the man and the woman to be each other's companions and gave them dominion over everything else that inhabited the world." To regain his breath, he stopped speaking for a few seconds, and then added, "Do you want to hear about the Undoing as well?"

"No, mankind's fall from grace is another story entirely and deserves to be examined separately," replied King Jonathan. "Besides, there is more than enough to discuss in the creation myth without dragging the Undoing into it."

"There is, Your Majesty?" Zahir echoed dubiously. As far as he was concerned, the creation story basically amounted to saying that in a few days the gods and goddesses had formed the world from nothing. While that was an impressive feat, it didn't strike him as a particularly complex or fascinating tale. That was part of the reason why he had always preferred fire stories about battles over religious ones.

"Creation myths represent any people's way of answering the universal questions of who they are, how they got here, and what they are doing here," the king informed him. "In essence, creation stories provide a definition people can use to discover their place and the place of everything else in the world. If you are going to be the Voice, you definitely need to comprehend how the Bazhir creation story shapes the Bazhir worldview."

Although he was still confused about how the Bazhir creation story could possibly create a unique perspective when almost identical creation tales were told throughout the Eastern Lands, Zahir nodded as if he understood.

"Let's analyze the creation story from the start to see just how important the implications of it are," his knightmaster went on. "Now, as you said, according to the Bazhir creation tale, in the beginning, there were only the gods and the goddesses, and that these deities created the world, the sun, the stars, and the moon. What does that tell us?"

"That the gods and goddesses are the beginning of everything, and therefore, that they are the most important and most powerful things in the universe," hedged Zahir, his forehead knotting. It was impossible for him not to feel out of his depth in a metaphysical conversation. "It says that without the gods and goddesses nothing would exist, meaning that nothing can exist outside of or above them."

"Yes, in this story, the cosmos is centered around the gods and the goddesses, not around humans. The tale leaves little doubt that humans are creatures, not the creators." The king nodded. "It tells us more than that, though. On its most basic level, the story regards creation as the result of deliberate actions rather than as a byproduct of chance. It also suggests that since the gods and goddesses created the celestial bodies and the earthly world we inhabit, that the gods and goddesses are transcendent creators. That means that the gods and goddesses were not created, and that they always existed. In short, then, all that exists has a single, ultimate source—the gods and goddesses—but the gods and goddesses were not created. Now, what does the idea that Mithros created man in his image and the Goddess formed woman in hers imply?"

"It means that man and woman were created differently, but they were made for each other and are both important in their own way." As far as Zahir was concerned, that made sense. Men and women had different, necessary roles to fulfill in society, and if either gender didn't meet those obligations, civilization would crumble. All that showed that males and females were connected to each other, and the fact that the two sexes needed to work together in order to produce children made that point even more apparent. Feeling a bit more confident, he elaborated, "It means that humans are special creatures, because, unlike other animals, they are made in the image of the divine."

"Exactly." Again, King Jonathan nodded. "Mithros and the Goddess themselves gave humans dominion over everything else in the world. A literal reading tends toward the conclusion that humans are masters of the world, and, as such, are entitled to use everything in it for their benefit. However, a deeper reading would suggest that humans have been entrusted with the conservation of creation. Such a reading means that people have the moral obligation to act as good stewards of the world and to live in harmony with all of its human and non-human inhabitants as much as possible. Is there anything else in the creation myth that struck you as significant?"

"No, sire." Shaking his head, Zahir thought that he was still trying to absorb everything his knightmaster had said.

"In my opinion, there are two other important theological implications of the Bazhir creation story," stated his knightmaster. "The first is that since the power of the gods and goddesses is reflected in the wonderful design of the world, the study of nature is a means of appreciating the divine. The other crucial point is that the world was created to be enjoyed, which means that food and drink—with the exception of alcohol—are to be savored, just as wealth and possessions can be enjoyed provided they don't keep others in a state of deprivation."

"I see, Your Majesty," Zahir murmured, and he did. Many of the tenets the king mentioned were beliefs that his culture had ingrained in him that he had never tried to articulate, since they seemed both clear and indefinable to him.

"You might think that you see, but a different level of understanding is required of a Voice," King Jonathan remarked. "Lay down."

"What, Your Majesty?" Positive that he had misheard, Zahir blinked.

"Lay down, Squire," repeated the king.

Flabbergasted by the odd command, Zahir hesitated. Then, reminding himself that he had done even more insane things this evening, he complied. When his knightmaster touched his back, he stiffened, and he twisted away when the man lifted his shirt.

"What are you doing?" he demanded loudly enough to be heard over the blood pounding in his ears. He remembered laying on his sleeping mat with his father rolling up his shirt to beat him too many times than he wanted to think about, and this situation was too close to that for his comfort.

"I'm not going to beat you," King Jonathan reassured him gingerly, and Zahir recognized that his knightmaster must have been able to read his mind perfectly thanks to his distress. He also knew, although he couldn't explain how he had attained this information, that the king wanted to rest a soothing hand on his shoulder but didn't do so because he comprehended that Zahir would squirm away. "I'll never strike you. Some of the training you'll undergo will be painful, and I can't do anything about that, but I'll never go out of my way to hurt you."

"You said that pain would teach me a lesson when I told you that you were hurting me when you were healing my spidren scrapes," Zahir pointed out, eyeing his knightmaster accusingly over his shoulder. He understood the notion that pain taught lessons. That had been the logic behind his father's attempts to thrash the defiance, insolence, and willfulness out of him and his sisters. "When I wasn't properly repentant about hitting Myra, you wanted to slap me. Those are the same thoughts and emotions people have when they are beating someone."

"The pain you felt from your cuts was a natural consequence of your decision to chase after the spidrens, Zahir," the king corrected softly. "It would have been irresponsible of me not to ensure that you were healed, and healings hurt. However, when I healed you, my intent was to ease your suffering—not to cause you pain. The purpose of beating someone is to cause them pain."

Here, Zahir's jaw clenched. He didn't want to think about his father intending to cause him and his sisters pain. If he had to consider his father's beatings at all, he wanted to think that the beatings had only been meant to teach him and his siblings the value of respect, obedience, and hard work.

"As for wanting to hit you, there have been many occasions when I have longed to smack many different individuals," King Jonathan went on. "Laws and customs prevent me from assaulting adults who aggravate me. If I am expected to find diplomatic and mature ways of dealing with grown-ups who displease me, I don't see why I shouldn't employ similar tactics with children and teenagers, especially ones I'm supposed to set a good example for."

"My father was an excellent parent," pronounced Zahir, his spine rigid, because he couldn't help but feel like his knightmaster was criticizing his father, which wasn't fair, since Zahir's father was dead and so couldn't defend himself. "It's not his fault that his children deserved to be beaten."

Yes, it definitely wasn't his father's fault that Zahir was such a disappointment. Although, as the man's only son, Zahir should have been his father's favorite child, he always appeared to have fallen short of the demands of being his father's heir and the future chief of his tribe. Even the reserved Laila, skilled at weaving, cooking, and cleaning, hadn't been his father's favorite.

No, his father's favorite had been the beautiful, rebellious Aisha. His father's favorite hadn't been the only son desperate to fulfill his duties, or the older daughter who spent her whole life atoning for the unpardonable crime of being born plain instead of pretty enough to cause gasps or ugly enough to incite pity. Rather, his father's favorite had been the younger daughter who was so headstrong that no thrashing could break her will.

Although Zahir should have been envious of Aisha for stealing his father's love, he couldn't bring himself to harbor such an emotion. After all, he understood his father's behavior, since his preferred sister was Aisha, not Laila. Indeed, knowing this, he couldn't help but ponder what the profit of virtue was when bad people like Aisha seemed to receive all the attention while good ones like Laila faded into the shadows.

"I didn't say that your father was a poor parent," King Jonathan said.

Zahir opened his mouth to reply that the king had implied it, but he was cut off by his knightmaster. "Anyway, I'm not going to beat you, Zahir. I'm going to give you a memory."


	15. Chapter 15

Memory

"You're going to give me a memory?" Zahir echoed, twisting his neck so that he could eye the king. "Why do you need to touch me at all then, sire? Why can't you just worm your way into my head like you did when you were showing me our bond?"

"Before I was showing you an emotion, not a memory," explained his knightmaster. "Emotions are less complex than memories, and, therefore, are easier to transmit. In order to transfer a memory, skin to skin contact must be made, just as blood must always be involved in the passing on of authority or power among the Bazhir. It's part of the magic that binds the Bazhir together."

Shuddering as he remembered the surge of power that had deluged his veins when his blood had mingled with his father's in the ritual that elevated him to chief of his tribe, Zahir mumbled, "I don't understand you."

That was a lie. Maybe he didn't comprehend exactly what King Jonathan was telling him, but he certainly knew enough to feel disconcerted.

"You understand more than you let on, and you'll comprehend still more after you receive the memory I'm about to give you," his knightmaster answered briskly.

That was all the warning that Zahir received before a wave of what felt like ice water was smashing onto his back, threatening to splinter his spine into a million dysfunctional fragments. Grinding his teeth, he had just enough time to note inwardly that an invisible, frigid tide was just what he needed washing over him on a cold night when suddenly, without even closing his eyes, he found that he wasn't on the divan any more, or, at least, he could no longer feel or see the sofa under his chest.

He was hurling through the black, infinite void of space. It was only the jolting of his internal organs as he flew through the darkness that told him he was moving at all, because there was nothing—not even yellow pinpricks of stars—to provide him with any means of orienting himself. Oh, and was it dark in space with nothing to relieve the endless blackness, and was it impossibly cold with no sun to produce any warmth…

That was changing now, though. Mithros, who was so much stronger and more glorious than any mere mortal could imagine, was drawing some of the darkness into a sphere. That sphere hardened into rock, and, somehow, Zahir, who couldn't possibly have been there, saw white-crested mountains, verdant dales, waving grasslands, soggy fens, towering forests, and harsh yellow deserts form. As Mithros shaped the landmasses of the globe, the Goddess, whose beauty would be enough to make any mortal faint, was stroking dents along the world's surface. Wherever her divine fingers touched, brooks, rivers, seas, and oceans materialized. From a distance, the world was now a glittering mass of jade and cobalt, spinning against the empty backdrop of space. From this perspective, the world itself looked like a miracle.

Now, the cold was fading as well, as Mithros breathed out the blazing fire that was the sun. As he did so, the Goddess was tapping the black with her fingers, and, wherever they landed, stars burst into flame like candles.

Then, Zahir could see Mithros and the Goddess working together to create a male and female member of every imaginable creature from the fiercest beast of the sea to the most vibrant birds of the sky to the most lethal desert cobra. When they had finished creating every animal that roamed the world, Zahir felt the oddest sensation.

Suddenly, he felt as though his body, which hadn't truly existed until that moment, was being fused out of dust. Then, the clouds that had dominated his mind without him being aware of them vanished as hot air filled his chest. Feeling as though he were awakening from a long dream he hadn't even realized he was locked in, he blinked. When he glanced around him, he saw that he was in a lush valley filled with handsome animals, lovely flowers, and trees that were laden with mouth-watering fruit. He was supposed to name the animals and the plants. Mithros and the Goddess had honored him above all creatures by providing him with the chance to identify all the other forms of life that the world was teeming with.

On his left, a woman almost as gorgeous as the Goddess was rising on her elbows. She was the perfect partner that the Goddess, in her love of him, had forged for him. Gazing at the woman's smooth skin, he understood for the first time just how wonderful life before the Undoing must have been. A second later, he wished that he had never received this revelation, because you couldn't miss what you had never known…

The vinegar taste of defeat and resentment flooded his mouth as the image of the blooming valley and the magnificent woman disappeared from his head, yanking him back to the king's chamber, where the divan he was laying on abruptly didn't feel so comfortable anymore.

"That—that was amazing, Your Majesty," he whispered, fixing wide eyes on his knightmaster and trying to recall how to breathe again.

"Yes, it is always astounding to be reminded of just how mighty the gods are in comparison to us mortals," agreed King Jonathan quietly, as Zahir, his breathing returning to normal, sat up. "Things like that memory I just gave you keep me humble, because they remind me of just how large a gap exists between my power that of the gods. The gods could create the world, the sun, and the stars out of nothing, but with the help of the Dominion Jewel I could barely hold Tortall together when my cousin sought to destroy it, and even then the energy required to do that resulted in a few years of famine. At the very least, such things remind me that any powers the gods grant me they expect me to use wisely."

Trying not to think about the havoc that would ensue if the king just decided one day that he liked making earthquakes with the Dominion Jewel, Zahir changed the subject by pointing out, "You can't have been present at the start of the world, sire."

"Of course not. I'm nowhere near that old, Squire," his knightmaster replied dryly. "The memory I transmitted to you has been passed along through centuries of Voices. The Voice keeps the memory of such things alive for the Bazhir, and the Bazhir keep such memories alive for the Voice."

"Even the first Voice can't have been alive for the creation of the world." Zahir shook his head. "Even if the first Voice was the first man, he couldn't have witnessed the formation of the world, since he was made after the world, the sun, the stars, and all the animals."

"Your point would be what, Zahir?" King Jonathan raised an eyebrow.

"That we can't know that the memory is true, Your Majesty," burst out Zahir, shocked that his point wasn't obvious, and that he seemed to be the only person in a practically endless chain of Voices to hit upon this stumbling block.

"Your argument depends on how you define truth and knowledge," the king responded calmly, and Zahir recognized that his knightmaster must have at one time noticed the same inconsistency that he had. "If you limit truth to verifiable facts, then, yes, this memory doesn't contain truth, and, if you define knowing as a state that can only be arrived at through rational inquiry, then, yes, we will never know that this memory happened. However, if you take a broader perspective that truth is anything that increases one's understanding of life or the human condition, then this memory has much in the way of truth. As for knowing, if you are willing to accept that knowing can be a state of emotional security that you have found the correct answer even if you don't have irrefutable evidence to back it up, you can say that we know that the memory happened even if we don't have solid proof that it did. When you see that throughout the Eastern Lands, there are only minor differences in this same creation story, it's hard to believe that there isn't some truth to it even if we can't rationally know that it occurred."

"But we can't know for sure that it happened, sire," frowned Zahir.

"Faith entails believing in something without any solid proof," his knightmaster informed him. "Believing in a religious story isn't the same as believing in a mathematical equation, and problems erupt the instant people begin acting as though it is."

"Yes, Your Majesty." Although he wasn't satisfied by this because he wanted clear answers not more confusion, Zahir nodded. "It's challenging to believe in something you don't have any proof for, though."

"Having faith isn't easy for anyone, Zahir." King Jonathan's cerulean eyes lanced into him. "Still, not many people in history have been fortunate enough to receive as powerful evidence for the divine as you just did. After experiencing a memory as awe-inspiring as that, I have to say that you are far more of a cynic than I am if you can't believe in Mithros and the Goddess."

"I never said that I didn't believe in them." Zahir shrugged. "I never said that I didn't believe that they created the world, either, sire. I'm willing to believe that they exist and that they created the world from scratch. Yet, I'm not about to accept that they created the world and us out of love. I think that they created humans just so they could amuse themselves by watching us suffer and destroy each other. I bet the only reason that they placed us in a perfect valley in the beginning was just so that we could know what paradise was like before we were denied it. Anyone who created humans would have to understand that forbidden fruit is the most attractive kind, and that any time people are told not to do something, they immediately wish to do that very thing. Telling us not to eat the pomegranates was just baiting us and destining us for failure, so that we could blame ourselves instead of them for our misery."

"I realize that you haven't placed much faith in the justice or the mercy of the gods since your father died," the king began only to be interrupted by Zahir.

"Why should I have faith in their justice or mercy, Your Majesty?" demanded Zahir heatedly. He could feel the anger boiling through him now, and he did nothing to quell his ire. Rage was safe, because it was a comfort and a constant in a cruel, ever-shifting world where little else could be relied upon. If he no longer had faith or tradition, at least he had wrath. "I prayed for my father not to die and Aisha would have traded her life for his, but the Black God stole him anyway. The gods just let him be murdered by his own brother even though he always said his prayers, followed the fasts strictly, and did everything the gods ask mortals to do. What's the point of praying if the gods aren't listening? Why beg for help from the gods when they don't care about our suffering at all?"

"Just because a parent refuses the request of his child, it doesn't mean that he doesn't care about his child's well-being, Zahir, and just because a ruler doesn't grant the wish of every subject who petitions him, that doesn't mean that the ruler doesn't listen to his people." King Jonathan squeezed his shoulder gently, and he felt some of his temper drain away. "It's the same with the gods. Sometimes they answer our prayers with a no."

"Why do they answer prayers like the one I made for my father's survival with a no, sire?" As Zahir's eyes narrowed, he could feel the fury returning. The rage was welcome, because it held the pain at bay and prevented tears from welling in his eyes.

"It is arrogance for mortals to expect to comprehend all the mysteries of the gods," his knightmaster responded softly. "We just have to trust that the gods have a reason behind everything they do, no matter how insane it may seem from our perspectives."

"Faith again," observed Zahir, scowling. "I'm rubbish at that, Your Majesty, since I have no proof that they care about mortals at all, which makes it impossible for me to believe that they are doing what's best for us even if we can't understand the good they are doing in our lives."

"That's because you are focusing on the negatives, not the positives, and on what the gods have stolen from you, rather than on what they have given you," the king told him sharply. "Squire, the evidence that the gods care about their creation is all around us if you bother to look. You claim that the gods only made the world to delight in our misery, but you ignore the fact that if that was their objective, they should have made an ugly world for us, instead of one that is filled with beauty. The gods made our world beautiful so that we could take pleasure in our surroundings, and if the gods didn't care about the well-being of their creations, they would not have made so many animals that are perfectly suited to their environments."

"The gods made many animals that are perfect predators, too," snorted Zahir. "Do the gods love the helpless mouse even as the snake devours it?"

"This world isn't perfect or fair, and I never claimed that it was, Zahir." King Jonathan's tone became even sharper than before. "I was merely suggesting that it isn't as horrible as you make it out to be."

Reflexively, Zahir opened his mouth to retort, but no words emerged from his lips, because he recognized just before he spoke that arguing that the world was every bit as terrible as he had claimed earlier would make him sound childish. In the end, he mumbled, "I'm sorry I sound so—so vitriolic about the gods, sire, but I do feel like they have betrayed me. It's hard not to be bitter when you feel betrayed."

"I understand how grief can make a person doubt the gods, and I'm aware of how difficult it can be to learn to trust again after you have been betrayed." The king sighed. "All I'm asking is that you try to soften the heart you've hardened against the gods and to be slightly more open-minded about them. You really might discover that they aren't as callous and fickle as you believe them to be."

Biting his lip, Zahir hesitated for a moment. Then, he muttered, "Your Majesty, I'll try to do what you said. I suppose the Bazhir do deserve a Voice with a spiritual philosophy that's more optimistic than 'the gods don't care about us at all, and the world is a dreadful place to live.'"

"They do," confirmed King Jonathan, his lips twitching upward wryly. "Now, tomorrow, I want you to thank the gods for at least one thing."

"Yes, sire." Obediently, Zahir nodded even as he attempted to think of something for which he could thank the gods.

"Off to bed, then, you great skeptic." His knightmaster waved a hand in dismissal, and he rose from the sofa. Then, he bowed, left the room, and navigated his way down the labyrinthine corridors to the room he shared with Trevor.

As he slipped into the chamber which seemed so cramped and chilly compared to the king's rooms, Zahir saw that Trevor was curled up in bed, snoring loudly. Thinking that sharing a bed with a snorer was at least better than doing so with a sleep-talker, a sheet-hogger, or a bed-wetter, he crawled under the covers. His brain kept debating whether the gods might actually care about mortals, and it was a long time before the sound of Trevor's snores lulled him to sleep.

Zahir felt like he had barely shut his eyes when it was time for him to wake up again. Grumbling incoherently under his breath, he mentally cursed time for continuing to move instead of temporarily stopping for three hours so that he could awaken via civilized, gradual process of stretching and yawning. Unfortunately, he was stuck with an uncompromising system, which forced him to shove himself out of bed and pull on a shirt and breeches. Then, he stumbled over to the wash basin and cleaned himself with the cold water.

He was too tired to speak to Trevor as the two of them dressed and used the wash basin. His mood wasn't improved when he discovered that the day was as cloudy as the previous one had been, which meant that he would definitely not be thanking any of the gods for the weather. After saddling the king's and his own mount, Zahir had nothing to do but wait in the castle courtyard beside Trevor as the royal entourage completed all the steps necessary for its departure in as excruciatingly slow a fashion as possible.

"Nice to be on the move again," remarked Trevor merrily when they finally left the castle, his horsemanship clumsier than ever as he munched on the sausage and cheese pastry that every member of the train had received for breakfast.

Presumably, the turnovers were a time-saving device, since people were supposed to be able to eat them while traveling. However, as far as Zahir could see, the pastries hadn't had the desired impact, because it had taken long enough for them to depart that they could all have eaten breakfast in the castle. Besides, many courtiers were so unskilled at riding that making them eat and control a horse at the same time bogged down the whole procession.

"It takes us so long to get moving that soon we'll have to stop again for lunch." Zahir rolled his eyes as he bit into his own meat and cheese turnover. "This has to be the most inefficient way to travel."

"Whenever a large group of people tries to accomplish anything, beings start holding each other up and tripping over one another," chuckled Trevor. "The trick is to learn to be amused, rather than angered, by such things. Life is too short not to laugh at most of the follies of human society, and if you get upset over every stupid thing people do, you'll never have the time to be happy."

Before Zahir could devise a reply to this odd philosophy, Trevor went on, "You took an awful long time getting tea last night. Were you storing up a lot of food in your stomach for your month-long fast?"

"I haven't participated in the month-long fast for years," Zahir answered, wishing that his cheeks weren't flaming with embarrassment at his lack of religious devotion, since it should have been nobody's business but his own if and how he worshipped the gods. "Before I entered page training, I followed the fast very strictly, not even swallowing my own saliva if I could avoid it and eating only a small meal after sunset, because that was how my father raised me. When I started page training, though, I stopped participating in the fast, since I would have felt foolish not eating in the mess hall when everyone else was, and, besides, I needed the energy for training."

"I'm sorry our culture interfered with your devotions," said Trevor, who appeared genuinely apologetic.

"You don't have to be sorry," Zahir replied crisply, shaking his head. "It was my choice to stop fasting. If I had been truly devoted, I would have kept the fast. I'm a lapsed Bazhir, but really it's no one's fault but my own."

"Practically everybody is lapsed in terms of religion," commented Trevor, and Zahir supposed that he could thank the gods for giving him someone who was more understanding of his shortcomings than he was himself. "Prayer and other religious devotions take time, and it's so easy to get caught up in other things that seem more important. Besides, it's hard to believe in invisible, benevolent deities when life is so harsh."

"You don't think that I'm bad because I'm not as devoted to the gods as I should be?" Zahir asked, his forehead knotting, since he had anticipated disapproval rather than compassion.

"I myself don't pray or attend services half as often as I should, so I would be a hypocrite indeed to criticize you for something I am guilty of myself," Trevor told him, smiling slightly. "Anyway, as far as I see it, religion should be about understanding others, not judging them. Understanding someone else can draw them closer to the gods and you, but judging them can only alienate them from the gods and you. If I wanted to encourage somebody to build their relationship with the divine, the last thing I would do is condemn them."

"You believe in redemption then?" inquired Zahir, who was astonished to find that breathing and speaking were more challenging than usual, cocking his head.

"Of course." As he established as much, Trevor's smile broadened. "I may be lapsed in terms of religion, but I still think that the greatest thing about religion is the notion of redemption. I believe that we can be forgiven as long as we show some sign that we are trying to make ourselves better. In my opinion, if I can have compassion and understanding for people who go astray, omniscient and completely merciful deities should display more clemency and empathy than me. All in all, I think that even though the gods are capable of remembering every wrong we do, they are also willing to forget them if we demonstrate some interest in atoning for our crimes."

Listening to Trevor, Zahir felt his heart swell. He definitely wasn't ready to forgive himself yet, and he wasn't sure if the gods could forgive him, or even if he wanted them to. Still, it was a comfort to know that somebody as intelligent as Trevor believed that he wasn't beyond hope of redemption. After all, sometimes redemption was all a person had left.

"Thank the gods for you," he whispered and meant it. Perhaps the gods were cruel and indifferent to human suffering, but somehow, even if they hadn't intended to aid him, they had sent him Trevor, and for that he was grateful. After all, Trevor had shown him that faith wasn't about praying or attending services—it was about living your life as ethically as you could. Maybe there was nothing wrong with saying prayers or attending services, but doing those things was no good if it had no effect on how you acted the rest of the time. Prayers, fasting, and attending services were the trappings, not the substance, of faith. That meant that if Zahir wanted to find redemption or his faith again he would have to be far more active than he might have imagined before.

"I appreciate you thanking the gods for me." Trevor's eyes shone playfully. "I admit that I think that the gods judge us based on the impact our actions had on others, which is why I think that bad carriage drivers have a better chance of being judged favorably in the afterlife than many priests and priestesses do. After all, people pray during a wild carriage ride, but they sleep during a boring sermon."

"That comment has to be a blasphemy of some sort," snorted Zahir, who couldn't restrain a smirk. "Blasphemy cancels out any points you may have earned by my thanking the gods for you."

"True," Trevor agreed, the sparkle in his eyes going undimmed. "Well, at least I am no worse off than I was before we began this conversation."

After that, the two of them entertained themselves with riddles until the strength of the sun struggling to penetrate the clouds suggested that it was around noon, and the entire entourage halted by a river to for a picnic lunch in the windy chill.

Before Zahir could sit down to eat the salads and sandwiches, he had to take Sufia and the king's stallion down to the river for a drink. As he watched Sufia and Ripple gulp down the water, his eyes fell on a handsome black gelding that was drinking beside them.

Glancing at the young man decked out in the colors of the Own who was standing beside the gelding, Zahir observed, "That's a fine gelding. It's odd to see a fighting man riding one. Most warriors prefer the more aggressive stallions or the nimbler mares to geldings."

"My lord Raoul has an eye for horseflesh, and he always says that your people showed us the flaw in riding stallions into battle," announced the other young man, a distinct note of pride in his tone. "He says that your warriors rode agile mares into battle, and our stallions—the mighty terror of the infantry—all broke formation to chase them, so their riders got hacked to pieces by your people."

"I grew up hearing such tales," Zahir stated, lifting his chin. His tribe had been a renegade one until King Jonathan had become the Voice, and nobody could deny that the Bazhir had been the only group that had presented a real military challenge to King Jasson. When the rest of Barzun and parts of Tusaine crumbled, the Bazhir had refused to surrender the fight. Zahir's people were mighty warriors, and he had every right to be proud of his heritage. "I wasn't aware that any of the northerners learned from those battles, since, if the stories are accurate, they just kept employing the same tactics against the Bazhir."

"Lord Raoul is a skilled commander," the other boy informed him tersely. "He's studied the fiascoes of the Bazhir Wars and is determined not to repeat them."

"Fiascoes from the northerner perspective, but glorious victories from the Bazhir standpoint," Zahir muttered. "Anyway, you seem to know a lot about Lord Raoul."

"Of course I do. I'm his standard bearer, Lerant of Eldrone," the other boy answered. "He's a good man. He took me into the Own when the navy and the army wouldn't because they didn't want to risk offending the king by admitting me when my kraken of an aunt committed high treason."

"King Jonathan is a good man, too," declared Zahir, his spine stiffening, since Lerant seemed to be blaming his problems on the king, and Zahir wasn't about to let anyone insult his knightmaster in his presence. After all, King Jonathan might possess quite a collection of eccentric, progressive ideas, but he was a talented leader and he certainly wasn't a vicious person.

"I never said he wasn't." Lerant wiped an invisible speck of dirt from the black gelding's saddle. "It would be most imprudent of me to criticize the king when it's so easy for any words that leave my mouth to be misinterpreted as an indication that I'm liable to follow in my aunt's shoes and become a traitor. Still, I have noticed that the king presumes me guilty based not on what I've done, but what a family member of mine has done. If he didn't perceive me as guilty, he could have convinced the army or the navy to accept me. Instead, he allowed them to treat me as guilty even though I had committed no crime except to be born into the wrong noble family."

Biting his lip since Lerant's story reminded him too much of Nadir's, Zahir stroked Sufia's nose as his mare turned away from the water. After a moment's pause, he said, "No ruler can be completely kind or fair to everyone all the time. King Jonathan has to make decisions that he believes will benefit the maximum number of people, and sometimes that entails making choices that will injure people. That doesn't mean that he enjoys hurting others. It just means that he has to worry about the big picture rather than the small one."

"Perhaps, but that isn't much of a consolation when you are one of the beings whose rights get trampled over." Lerant's mouth twisted. "Rulers may have long memories about who commits treason, but subjects who are treated unjustly remember their grievances for even longer. Sometimes the long memories of rulers cause them to create hostility in people that otherwise would have been totally loyal to them."

Swallowing hard as he thought about how he could definitely be accused of treating Nadir unfairly and wondering just how much bitterness his injustice might have formed in a cousin who might have initially been completely dedicated to him, Zahir didn't offer any further comment. Instead, he contemplated whether his unfairness to Nadir might be his undoing as he led Sufia and Ripple away from the river before joining the picnic, although his exchange with Lerant had murdered his appetite.


	16. Chapter 16

Veiled and Unveiled

Four mornings later, Zahir and Trevor exited the gates of the castle and stepped onto the crowded, sandy streets of Persopolis. The sun was just beginning to climb in the sky, its rays shining off the sand and buildings, and the chill of the night had not yet departed completely, which meant that the heat was not oppressive, as it would be in less than an hour.

"I'm glad for the heat," Trevor remarked merrily, as they walked among the throngs, although a thin layer of sweat was already glistening like dew on his forehead. "Last night my teeth were chattering loudly enough to awaken the deaf. I've always been told that desert nights were brutally cold because there were few plants to retain the day's heat, but I never believed it until I experienced it."

"Most people don't understand the desert." Thinking that maybe even he didn't understand the desert even though it had sculpted him as much as it had anything else that had to fight to survive in its merciless environment, Zahir shrugged. "They think of it as being hot and dry all the time, and they believe that is what makes it so terrible. They don't comprehend that what makes it so hard is that the nights are cold and the days are burning. They don't see that the harshest and most beautiful thing about the desert is that it is both poles with no temperate zone in between. That's why there is so little life here, and the little life there is here is so tough."

"I look forward to exploring Persopolis," commented Trevor, his wide eyes drinking in the adobe buildings that lined the thoroughfare, the vibrant woven awnings hanging over the entrances of homes and businesses to provide passerby with some shield from the broiling sun, and the vendors in the packed marketplace selling foods that were never eaten in Corus. "We didn't get to see much of it when we arrived last night."

"Me too," Zahir admitted. He had never set foot in the Bazhir city before, because his father had viewed the place as too corrupted by the northerners, and he was looking forward to examining the city as much as Trevor was. He was grateful that his knightmaster had given him the day—the first of the celebration days before the month of fasting—off to join the festivities in the streets.

"The Bazhir make the nicest rugs," murmured Trevor, pausing to stroke a thick green carpet with golden and crimson spade designs threaded into it.

"Our women have to be skilled at making carpets," Zahir pointed out. "We spend much more time kneeling and sitting on the floor than northerners do. We need rugs and pillows to make that comfortable."

"The Bazhir even sleep on the floor." Trevor grinned. "My back will take some getting used to that."

"You could have taken one of the rooms with a northern bed as most of the people the king and queen brought down here did," Zahir reminded him.

"There's no point in traveling if you don't immerse yourself in the native culture," answered Trevor, shaking his head. "Those who refuse to eat, drink, and sleep like the natives of an area would do better to stay home."

Zahir's gaze fell upon the stall next to the rug merchant's, which was selling women's headcoverings in a variety of sizes and more shades than he had known existed, and he was distracted before he could offer a response. Moving over to admire a lavender headcovering, he thought that Aisha would look gorgeous in it. Biting his lip, he wondered if he ought to purchase it for her. Maybe she wouldn't have a problem covering herself modestly if she didn't have to wear the black headcovering their father had always insisted on her donning. Perhaps she wouldn't mind a headcovering as long as it was colorful…

Of course, his father was probably glowering down on him from the Divine Realms for even contemplating the notion of buying a colorful headcovering for his sister. No doubt, if his father were here, he would be receiving a lecture on how the whole point of a headcovering was to convey chastity, not to attract attention as bright colors did. In fact, all these vivid headcoverings for women was probably one of the reasons why his father had disapproved of the lifestyles of the Bazhir who inhabited Persopolis.

Then again, Zahir reasoned, even his father would have to concede that it was better for Aisha to wear some headcovering, no matter how colorful, than none at all, although, of course, his father would probably have screamed himself hoarse at Zahir for permitting his sister to walk around without a headcovering in the first place. Sometimes it was better to compromise than to lose entirely, and something about Aisha made Zahir want to compromise with her, since she was so impossible to refuse anything. Besides, his younger sister was so gorgeous that it seemed a terrible waste and a dreadful crime to mask her attractiveness in black.

Of course, Zahir had no way of knowing if his little sister would even wear the lavender headcovering if he purchased it for her, and squandering money was a terrible waste and a dreadful crime, too.

Before he could decide whether to buy the headcovering for Aisha, he saw a man in the Own uniform was having difficulty purchasing a cheoreg for breakfast.

"It can't possibly be a gift," the solider from the Own was protesting to the vendor, waving around the sweet roll he wanted to purchase and shoving two coppers under the merchant's nose. "Obviously, you couldn't remain in business for long if you just gave everything away as presents."

"No, no, I couldn't take your money," the merchant insisted, shaking his head and placing his hand over his heart to emphasize his sincerity. "The food is a gift."

Seeing the soldier from the Own frown in bemusement, Zahir snorted. He couldn't believe that the vendor was trying to engage an outsider in the complex practice of taroof. Nobody who wasn't raised in the desert could possibly understand the idea that a merchant was supposed to refuse the costumer's payment three times before finally accepting, and that, when he accepted, he was expected to thank the customer profusely for the customer's generosity.

"Insist on paying one more time," Zahir told the man from the Own.

"What good will that do?" The soldier fixed eyes as blue as an oasis upon Zahir. "He's already refused twice."

"With taroof, the third time is the charm," replied Zahir.

After shooting Zahir a dubious glance, the man from the Own returned his attention to the vendor. "Seriously, I insist on paying for the roll."

"Thank you most kindly for your generosity." Bowing, the merchant finally took the coins the soldier was thrusting at him.

"What a roundabout way to purchase groceries," observed the man from the Own, biting into his sweet roll. "It figures that as soon as I become a sergeant and can afford to indulge in treats, I end up in a place where shopping can only be accomplished by Players."

"Taroof may seem like an impractical way of conducting business," Trevor stated, coming up behind Zahir. "However, I do think that it enables everyone to feel proud of what they are able to give the other person, and that is very nice."

"Customs that do things like that mean a lot to us Bazhir." Zahir nodded, his mouth watering as he studied the zaatar spread on flatbread and smelled the sweet tea wafting toward him from the food stall. Reminding himself firmly that he had eaten before he left the castle, he went on, "Pride matters to us, since our egos are almost as large as those of you northerners."

"Your comment about northerners isn't fair," argued Trevor, as they continued down the street. "We don't have large egos."

"You northerners rode into a desert whole tribes were already living in and claimed it for your own without so much as a by-your-leave," Zahir sneered. "Then, when the tribes attack you for trying to steal their land, you call them savages. After that, to add insult to injury, you declare that there is nothing of value in the desert to make it worth stealing in the first place. The Bazhir wouldn't be arrogant enough to do something like that."

"No, the Bazhir would ask three times before taking the land," said the solider from the Own, his eyes glinting slyly.

"You shouldn't mock the ancient, serious custom of taroof." Loftily, Zahir lifted his nose in the air.

"Come now," Trevor interjected. "If you can mock northerners, it's only fair that we be allowed to poke fun at the Bazhir."

Before Zahir could remind Trevor that he had been forced to live among northerners for years while Trevor and the sergeant from the Own had spent less than a day among the Bazhir, the soldier announced, "I agree. By the way, I'm Domitan of Masbolle, but I really only answer to Dom."

"Pleasure to meet you, Dom. I'm Trevor of Marsh," answered Trevor, shaking hands with Dom.

"I'm Zahir ibn Alhaz," Zahir added.

"Zahir ibn Alhaz," echoed Dom, his eyes narrowing as he shook hands with Zahir. At first Zahir imagined that the northerner was expressing his displeasure with what to him must have seemed a harsh name that was impossible to pronounce. However, he realized this wasn't the case when the sergeant asked, "Are you squire to the king?"

Imagining that he was dealing with a conservative whose feathers had been ruffled by the king's decision to not only defy tradition by not taking the crown prince as squire but to spit upon it by selecting a Bazhir, Zahir gritted his teeth. Not for the first time, he wished that King Jonathan—not him—had to contend with all the people who had been aggravated by the fact that he, not Prince Roald, had been chosen as the king's squire, and responded tersely, "Yes, I am. If you have an issue with that, I urge you to take it up with His Majesty, since he's the one who wanted me to be his squire. I'm sure that your approval means a great deal to His Majesty, because he has nothing more important to do than ensure your personal happiness."

"I don't particularly care who your knightmaster is," Dom informed him, and he cocked his head in confusion. "I just wanted to know if you were the same Zahir ibn Alhaz that my cousin Neal mentioned in his letters to me."

"Your cousin was Neal?" Zahir repeated, arching his eyebrows and observing inwardly that it was just his luck that he would run into the cousin of possibly the only page he hated more than the Lump. "You're related to that idiot who if he were half as smart as he has convinced himself that he is would have learned how not to make the training master want to kill him every time he opens his big mouth?"

"I am."Dom's gaze locked on his. "He told me that you were a bully he and his friends had to fight in order to protect the first-years."

"I was fighting for tradition." Disdainfully, Zahir rolled his eyes. "If you understood the value of tradition, you wouldn't call me a bully just because I adhered to the custom of hazing first-years in order to teach them the importance of obeying orders."

"It doesn't strike you as ironic that a few moments ago you were condemning northerners for beating on the Bazhir and now you are defending bullying behavior in the pages' wing?" demanded Dom scornfully.

"The Bazhir value tradition," replied Zahir in a clipped tone. He tried not to remember how the part of him that always felt inferior when the northerners looked down their pale noses at him throbbed with vindication whenever he pushed a first-year page around, and strove not to recall how satisfied he had felt pounding into Seaver of Tasride in particular. Certainly he wasn't going to reflect on how that boy's mixture of Bazhir and northern blood represented the Bazhir subjugation via assimilation to the northerners that he so feared and despised since he couldn't fight against it and loathed himself for doing his own bit in moving the horrid process along. "Among the Bazhir, boys are not made into men and warriors without proving their toughness. Hazing is common in many cultures because it weeds out weaklings."

Dom opened his mouth to retort, but Trevor cut in, "That's quite enough arguing now. Both of you make valid points, and while it can definitely be helpful to discuss contrasting perspectives, I think it would be best if you two focused on what you have in common rather than on your differences at least until your tensions have diffused a little."

"Indeed." Dom raised his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. "Well, I'm afraid that I don't have any time to discover any fascinating similarities between myself and Squire Zahir, since I promised a friend I would join him on a ride through the nearby desert."

With that, he disappeared into the teeming marketplace. As he was swallowed up in the crowd, Zahir grumbled, "I hope that you forget your water canteen."

"You have already exceeded your daily ration of spiteful comments," Trevor chided him.

"You could have backed me up earlier, Trevor, instead of offering your diplomatic nonsense," scowled Zahir.

"It's my job to stop, not start, disagreements," Trevor pointed out.

"I was right." Stubbornly, Zahir stuck out his chin. "You should have supported me."

"You might have been right." Trevor sighed. "Being right isn't the most crucial thing, though. Peace matters more than being right."

"Being right is the most important thing," snapped Zahir. "Peace can be wrong. Sometimes peace is built on nothing more than brutal subjugation, repression, and lies."

"Such a peace is not a true peace," Trevor countered. "Such a peace has a tenuous foundation and will quickly crumble."

"Well, a peace with an equally shaky foundation is created when people aren't allowed to resolve their arguments and can only talk about things they have in common, because when conflicts aren't addressed, resentment develops," observed Zahir pointedly, referring to how Trevor had intervened in his debate with Dom.

"I didn't advocate that you not address your differences with Dom," Trevor responded levelly. "I merely suggested that you continue that aspect of the discussion once your tempers had cooled. It's best to debate important issues when your emotions aren't controlling you."

"I was taught that if something was important, you ought to attend to it right away," remarked Zahir. "I was taught that if something was truly important, it couldn't wait."

"Your argument with Dom could have waited," Trevor told him dryly. "Thus, by your own reasoning, your debate with Dom wasn't important, and, since it wasn't significant, it doesn't matter that I curtailed it."

"If you are devoting your life to bringing about true peace to the world, you should know that such an endeavor is destined for failure." Realizing that he had been outsmarted, Zahir altered the angle of his assault. "True peace won't ever exist in the world. It probably doesn't even exist in the Divine Realms, no matter what all the spiritual leaders say."

"I'm dedicating my life to bringing as much true peace to the world as I can through my skills as a diplomat." Trevor's jaw set resolutely.

"I spend my life fighting for true peace," retorted Zahir.

"I respect warriors." Trevor bit his lip. "As I told you, my brothers went through knight training, and that's part of the reason I decided to become a diplomat. I wanted to ensure that they didn't have to die in battle by making it possible for Tortall to negotiate solutions with her enemies rather than resorting to warfare. Can you blame me for not wishing to see young warriors and innocent civilians killed in battle?"

"I don't blame you for trying," conceded Zahir at last, "but I promise you that when your words fail, I'll be ready with my sword to go to war."

Silence fell between them for a moment, and then Trevor said quietly, "Come on. Lord Conan told me they are performing plays based on Bazhir myths in the next street over."

Zahir had no objections to this. Even if he still wasn't certain that he credited the ancient tales his people had told each other by the fireside for generations, some element of him was still enthralled by the power of the words. It had been awhile since he had been able to hear the storyteller of his tribe give a rendition of a myth, and he was excited to see how other storytellers would interpret the same tales.

Together, he and Trevor twisted their way through a jammed alley onto the next street. This road was even more congested than the one they had just left behind. Allowing themselves to be pushed along by the swarm of beings, they found themselves at a gigantic circle of carpets surrounding three roaring fires.

As he and Trevor wedged themselves onto a crammed rug, Zahir noticed King Jonathan, Queen Thayet, looking as immaculate as ever in a pink headcovering, and Lord Raoul seated in the place of honor on the other side of the circle.

After that, his attention was captured when a group of storytellers, all dressed in colored robes, started reenacting the creation myth. It didn't matter that he had heard the tale a hundred times before—the storytellers made it sound new, and he discovered that he couldn't breathe until the end of the story. Before he could appreciate the fact that he was untangled from the snare the story had trapped him in, he was wrapped up in tales about the founding of Persopolis and stories about the life of the first Voice.

Throughout the afternoon, gusts of wind carried the scent of spicy meat and vegetable kabobs to his nose, but his stomach didn't crawl and his mouth didn't water, because he was too captivated by the stories to be hungry. Without him being aware of it, the sun reached its zenith, baking his head and shoulders, and then gradually descended, burning into his eyes as it dropped toward the ground. It was only when the sun had set entirely, abandoning the world to darkness, and the dying fires failed to provide any real warmth in the chill of night, that the storytellers stopped offering their renditions of ancient tales.

When the storytellers concluded, Zahir and Trevor rose with everybody else. As he and Trevor wended their way back to the castle, Zahir stopped to purchase two sizzling kabobs from a cart. He gave one kabob to Trevor. The two of them were silent as they gobbled up the meat and vegetables, since they had only just realized how ravenous they truly were.

By the time that they reached the castle, their kabobs were finished, and they headed off to the baths. The two of them had scrubbed their bodies and washed their hair and were leaning against the marble walls of the cold pool of water, listening to the sounds of the fountains stirring up the water they were relaxing in, when a slender male Bazhir with Zahir's nose swam up to them.

"Zahir!" shouted the young man who had just joined them. "It is you."

"Nadir." Unsure of how to greet a kinsman that he had either betrayed or been betrayed by, Zahir clasped Nadir's wrists. It would have been a traditional salutation between family if he hadn't gripped the other young man's wrists too tightly, but then again, perhaps this greeting had always been about establishing dominance under the guise of politeness. After all, humans were always baring their teeth in smile and pretending that it meant friendship. Arching his eyebrows, he demanded, "What are you doing here?"

Before Nadir could reply, Trevor said, "You two seem to have much to discuss. I'll leave you alone now." With that, he climbed out of the water, toweled himself dry, and threw on his clothes.

Once Trevor had walked away, Nadir answered, "Now that Hassan is chief, I have fewer responsibilities and more freedom to do what I want. I have always wished to see this city, and Hassan was willing to allow me to travel here to observe the month of fasting."

"You always wished to see this city?" Zahir repeated, his eyes contracting skeptically. "I didn't know that."

"We don't know that much about one another," pointed out Nadir, his voice almost a whisper. "Our fathers wouldn't permit us to associate with each other when we were little. Maybe they feared we would contaminate one another."

Chewing on his lip, Zahir mentally agreed that he really didn't know his cousin well at all. After a moment's pause, he pressed, "Why did you always want to come here?"

"It's the only city the Bazhir ever built. That makes it unique and provides reason enough to visit the place." Nadir shrugged, and his gaze penetrated Zahir. "Besides, my father came here when he was around my age. He lived here for a year or so and picked up many crazy notions. Then, our grandfather died, your father was made chief in his place, and he ordered that my father return immediately to our tribe. I think that was when the rift developed between the two of them. Your father was a man deeply rooted in tradition, so he didn't understand how a male of the tribes could not see it as his duty to tend his flocks and defend the women and children of the tribe. My father was a man of unconventional ideas, and when he was trapped in a traditional life those unconventional ideas bred resentment and ultimately violence." Here, Nadir scooped up water in his palm, clenched his hands into a fist, and only tightened his grip as the liquid trickled through his fingers ever faster. "Some people are like water; the more you try to hold onto them, the more rapidly they slip out of your grasp."

"If Persopolis gave your father his lunatic ideas, Grandfather should never have allowed him to come here." Zahir glowered. "No wonder my father thought that Persopolis was a bastion of evil if it was what corrupted your father."

"Your father couldn't permit his brother to live with his crazy notions in Persopolis, but he had no problem forcing his only son to live among the northerners," snorted Nadir.

"The times were completely different," Zahir snarled, ever ready to defend the wisdom of his deceased parent. "When your father was in Persopolis, our tribe was still warring with the northerners, and anything related to them was wrong. After our Voice became the king of Tortall, it became prudent to have a son who was a knight, because the king wants Bazhir to be tied to the Crown so we don't revolt again, and we would like to minimize how much we are oppressed by northerners in the future. Sometimes we have to accept change even if we hate it. I know that from experience."

"Nothing endures. Not joy. Not grief. Not life. Not death," muttered Nadir, his eyes dark pools designed for his cousin to drown in. "Not even family betrayals."

"You are the only traitor here," growled Zahir, his jaw muscle tautening so much it hurt. "You are the one who lied to me about wanting to wed my sister."

"She was dead when I lied to you about that," Nadir volleyed back. "Marriages plans involving dead people don't matter."

"The truth matters." His eyes smoldering, Zahir gritted his teeth. "I should be able to rely on every member of my tribe—and especially my representative—to tell me the truth. Besides, you also forgot to mention that you were only interested in marrying my sister to steal my place as chief."

"You can't prove that." Nadir's cheeks were ashen, but his chin jutted out rebelliously. "An accusation of treachery of that magnitude requires substantial evidence."

"Rest assured that I will find that proof," Zahir declared coolly, thinking that such evidence would be necessary for his peace of mind. "Before this conversation, I wasn't sure that you were guilty, but now I have been reminded that you are the venomous snake hidden in the grass. It is my duty to purge the tribe of you, just as rid it of your father."

Before Nadir could retort, Zahir slid out of the baths in one smooth motion, slipped into his clothes, and hurried out of the room as rapidly as his dignity allowed.


	17. Chapter 17

Pride and Submission

Zahir was so furious after his conversation with his slimy cousin that he ended up stalking down corridors and up stairwells without even being aware of where he was headed. Unsurprisingly, this turned out not to be such a brilliant idea in a castle he was unfamiliar with, for, by the time he realized that he was letting his feet, not his mind, do the steering, he was already lost in the honeycomb of hallways.

Cursing under his breath, he glanced around him for a person he could ask for directions back to the royal chambers. If he could find the royal chambers, it would be easy enough to get back to his own room, which wasn't far from the royal quarters. Unfortunately, there was no one in the hallway he could ask directions from. Great. Of course, his feet had brought him to the deserted part of this strange castle…

He could hear his screams of frustration echoing off the walls…No, he couldn't. Those weren't coming from him; they were definitely too shrill to be emitted by any male.

The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck standing up, he moved swiftly and silently to the corner. Sticking his head cautiously around the bend, he spotted the source of the commotion and had to stifle a shout of his own.

Myra, her dress torn open, was howling as a grunting Bazhir guard pounded into her. Zahir's initial impulse was to yank his head back before he could be corrupted by a scene his parents would have defined as depraved. However, some instinct kept him from looking away. If this was consensual, then it was none of his business, even if he did think that this sort of activity should be confined to the marriage mat, but something about the way Myra was kicking at the soldier and biting at the Bazhir's palm, which was apparently attempting to muffle her wails, told him this wasn't consensual. Myra's shrieks, the tears streaming down her flushed cheeks, and the scarlet rivers of blood flowing down her legs indicated that she wasn't enjoying what was being done to her. She didn't want this to happen, and the Bazhir sentry wasn't her husband. He had no right to do this to her.

Of course, Zahir could have fled, done his best to purge this lurid scene from his memory, and nobody would know—except for himself and the gods, although if any divinity cared about Myra's screams, that entity should have rescued her. Myra had always grated on his nerves. Certainly, she had never treated him in a manner that made him wish to save her now.

Then again, nobody deserved to be raped. If his mother or sisters were in such a horrible position, he would want anyone who witnessed such a brutal crime against them to intervene on their behalf. Being a knight was about saving everyone, not just those you cared about, and character was what you had when no one was watching.

Wondering if he was a lunatic to champion someone he usually wished would be drawn and quartered, Zahir aimed a solid punch at the soldier's ear. Then, taking advantage of the man's shock at the unanticipated assault, he shoved the guard against the marble tiles of the far wall.

Dodging the enemy fist flying at his nose, he snapped over his shoulder at Myra, "Get out of here. Go to the healers and have them send someone down here."

He watched as she recovered her wits at his bark and raced off, clutching the tattered remnants of her dress together in a failed attempt at modesty. His momentary distraction ended abruptly when a fist smashed into his jaw, rattling his teeth around in his skull.

Swallowing the blood that burst into his mouth when his teeth sliced his tongue, Zahir could feel his heart thumping in his chest as he blacked his adversary's eye. Then, he twisted out of the path of a right hook launched at his nose and missed a blow to his opponent's eye.

When his fist rammed into the wall instead of flesh, Zahir cursed, and his foe seized the opportunity to snatch his arm and bang him against the wall. Ignoring the stars that swam through his brain, he tried and failed to evade the punches that hit his ears, his mouth, his nose, and his eyes.

After grinding his teeth and informing himself severely that he couldn't feel any pain at all, he kicked the other man in the groin. As his enemy paused for a second, Zahir pushed himself away from the wall, but discovered that he was too dizzy from all the consecutive head blows to stand and fight on his own.

He never got to learn how much longer his battered body could keep on fighting, because, at that moment, a contingent of guards joined them in the hallway. He saw the sentries tackle and shackle the Bazhir who had raped Myra. Then, a rainbow veil covered his vision before his entire world surrendered to a darkness so thick he was convinced that it had to be eternal.

Some time later—it could have been a minute or a century later as far as Zahir, who had been trapped in a peculiar alternate universe where time had ceased to hold any sway whatsoever—a candle flickered into existence in his mind. That candle ignited several others, and those candles lit still more. Soon, his head was consumed by a billion burning candles that made it impossible to sleep.

Grumbling incoherently in some language that certainly wasn't Common, he slit his eyes open. This endeavor required considerably more exertion than he was accustomed to since his eyelids seemed to have been replaced with stones while he was knocked out. When he finally opened his eyes, he realized that he was sprawled on a cot in the healer's ward.

The king was seated on a chair beside him, and Myra, unnaturally subdued, was lying on the bed to his right with the queen squeezing her hand. A male healer with skin as smooth and as black as an olive hovered over Zahir and observed in a satisfied voice, "The potion I made woke you up properly."

"Am I supposed to thank you for that?" demanded Zahir, who was unwilling to go to the bother of feigning courtesy when his head felt like a cavalry had just trampled over it. "At least when I was asleep, my head didn't hurt."

"I can do something for your headache, too," the healer educated him. An instant later, warm hands were placed upon his temples, and hot tendrils seeped into his brain, where they stroked away the pain in his head.

"I'm still tired," Zahir mumbled, yawning and noticing for the first time that his jaw had been healed. Judging by the lack of hurting from his ears, eyes, and nose, they had been tended to as well, which doubtlessly explained his exhaustion. Healings sapped as much energy as battle, or at least they did in his case.

"You can go back to sleep shortly," King Jonathan cut in, fixing a serious gaze upon Zahir. "I want to talk to you first."

"What about, sire?" At the present, the only topic Zahir was interested in was complaining about the pain he had been subjected to recently, but, somehow, he suspected that wasn't what his knightmaster wished to discuss.

"Do you remember anything that happened before you were knocked out, Squire?" asked the king, leaning forward in his chair. "We have Myra's testimony and physical evidence collected by the healers, but I would appreciate having your evidence to corroborate what Myra said."

"Yes, I remember what happened, Your Majesty," Zahir answered, massaging his forehead and wishing that he had never seen what he had witnessed in the corridor. Clearing his throat, because talking about what had occurred forced him to relive an experience he would rather forget, he went on, "I had spent the day in the city with Trevor, and when we returned, we visited the baths to tidy ourselves up. While we were cleaning ourselves, my cousin Nadir swam up to us. Trevor left Nadir and me alone so we could catch up in private, and our discussion became quite heated. I was angry and distracted when I left the baths, so I found myself in a deserted part of the castle. I cursed in frustration, and then I heard screams echoing off the walls. At first, I thought they were expressions of my own rage. Then, I recognized that they couldn't be mine, since they were female. I moved down the hallway to investigate, and, when I rounded the corner, I saw—"

"Yes, Zahir, what did you see?" King Jonathan pressed when he trailed off awkwardly.

"Something I shouldn't have seen, sire," muttered Zahir, his face a bonfire as his fingers fiddled with his blanket. The more vulgar drives of humanity were not appropriate subjects to talk about with anyone, nonetheless with someone as exalted as the King of Tortall or the Voice of the Tribes. "I saw a Bazhir guard pressing Myra up against the wall. He had her dress ripped apart, and she was howling as he thrust into her. At first, I wanted to run away, because if it was consensual, I didn't wish to watch any more of it and be contaminated by it. My feet wouldn't let me leave, though, because how she was sobbing, how he was trying to muffle her shouts with his palm, how she was kicking him, and how the blood was trickling down her legs told me she didn't want him to be doing what he was to her. I could have still left then, and nobody would have known except me, but I thought I would want somebody to intervene if something like this happened to my sisters or my mother, so I attacked the man. I smashed him against the wall and told Myra to run to the healers. The man and I continued to fight until a squad of guards arrived. Then, I lost consciousness and woke up here."

Zahir expected King Jonathan to ask him more questions, but, instead he extended a hand. At twitch of the king's fingers caused the sapphire fire of his Gift to settle over his squire's head. Before Zahir, whose heart was thudding in his chest at several times its typical rate, could reflexively pull himself away from the magical circle, he felt cool fingers prodding in his mind for a moment. Then, the circle of magic blazed fiercely white for a second before vanishing.

As Zahir wondered for the thousandth time since he had become the man's squire if the king was insane, Queen Thayet, who, along with Myra, had been staring at Zahir as he offered his testimony, scolded her husband, "I keep telling you not to do that to people without asking their permission first."

"It doesn't hurt anyone, even if they are lying through their teeth, my dear," King Jonathan pointed out, and Zahir had to admit this was true. It was alarming, but it wasn't painful.

"It scares people out of their wits to be encircled by the Gift without warning," responded Queen Thayet, gesturing at Zahir, who imagined that his skin was probably still three shades paler than normal. "You're lucky you didn't give him a heart attack or make him lapse into unconsciousness again."

"He didn't lose consciousness or have a heart attack," King Jonathan reminded her. "At least now we know that he is telling the truth."

By now, Zahir had recovered from the shock enough to feel miffed at being discussed as though he were not present, and his aggravation increased when he recognized that the king had performed magic to ascertain whether he was telling the truth.

"You didn't have to use the Gift to find out if I was lying," he commented, unable to prevent the indignation from invading his tone. "I've never lied to you, sire."

Biting his lip, Zahir found that he was feeling wounded, not annoyed, now. It stung to think that the king perceived him as a liar. He had a temper and a violent, impetuous streak, but he wasn't a liar. Whatever his flaws, he was honest. He had been raised to know that nobody could have faith in a person who wasn't honest, and there was nothing more useless than a being who couldn't be relied upon.

"I know," his knightmaster reassured him, clasping his knee. "It's just that in a case like this procedure must be followed."

"We wouldn't be here if procedure had been followed," announced Zahir, glowering at Myra. "This whole mess would never have happened if someone had been wearing a veil like proper females do while they are among the Bazhir."

"You dare blame this on me?" snarled Myra, as she blew her nose into a handkerchief, eying him incredulously.

"I don't see any other woman here who isn't wearing a veil," Zahir retorted, glad that Queen Thayet was still wearing the pink veil she had on earlier.

"I shouldn't have been raped even if I was walking down the corridor in my underwear," spat Myra, glaring at him. "It doesn't matter how tempting I looked. Nothing justifies rape."

"I didn't say anything did," Zahir snorted. "You can't pretend that nothing influences rape, though. If you dress like a slut, you can complain all you want when people treat you like one, but you can hardly be surprised that it happened, and if you are shocked, it can only because you are a fool."

"You think I wanted to be raped?" Furiously, Myra tossed her dirty handkerchief at his face and he ducked it easily. "For your information, I was a virgin, and this wasn't at all how I imagined losing my virginity."

Suddenly, sobs shook her shoulders, and Zahir didn't have a clue how to respond, so it was the queen, wiping the tears from Myra's cheeks, who said, "I know. Nobody pictures it that way, and no one should have to lose it in that fashion."

"You should wear a veil when you are among the Bazhir, Myra," insisted Zahir. As annoying as she was, he didn't want her dressing in a manner that would get her raped again, and she seemed too idiotic to recognize that wearing a veil would prevent her from getting raped.

"I don't want to have to hide my beauty just because some males have no self control," Myra hissed.

"Veils do more than hide beauty. They protect faces from the sun, and, as such, preserve beauty after a fashion," Queen Thayet informed Myra gently. "Some of the colorful veils even add to a woman's beauty I've found, and veils do a fine job of concealing less desirable facial features like my overlarge nose." Looking at Zahir, she added, "Anyway, many times, rape isn't about lust. In many cases, it is about power, and it can be more empowering to violate someone who is dressed modestly than somebody who isn't."

Not at all confident this was true but understanding it was stupid to argue with the queen, Zahir said, "If you say so, Your Majesty. I'm going to return to my room if nobody minds. I'd rather sleep on my own mat than on this uncomfortable cot."

"I want to speak with Musad ibn Salim—the man who raped Myra," announced King Jonathan, as Zahir shoved himself off his cot and discovered that the sick ward spun around him for a few seconds after he did so. "I'll accompany you back to your room, Squire, and then go down to the dungeons."

"I don't need you to escort me, sire," Zahir declared, steadying himself and taking the first of what seemed like a great deal of steps out of the infirmary.

"Nonsense," his knightmaster replied, as the two of them made their way down the aisle between the cots to the door. "You just sustained several injuries to your head, so you shouldn't go walking around by yourself. Anyway, there is no telling whether Musad has friends who might be angry enough to attack you if you are alone."

Figuring that since walking felt a lot more complicated than he had remembered it to be, having someone accompanying him back to his room might actually be a good idea, Zahir was silent as they left the infirmary. Then, he remarked abruptly, "Your Majesty, you are aware that I didn't witness all that transpired between Myra and that guard—"

"I should hope that you didn't," the king interjected. "I like to think that you wouldn't just stand around and watch someone get raped."

"I meant that I didn't get to see if she led the man on and then got cold feet on him," explained Zahir impatiently, irritated that his knightmaster had missed the point.

"Myra has admitted that she flirted with Masud, but she also insists that she made it clear that she did not want to have intercourse with him and was forced to do so." King Jonathan eyed Zahir sternly, as though he were the one who had failed to grasp an important, obvious point. "The physical evidence of a struggle collected by the healers and your own testimony supports her argument."

"If she was flirting with him, there are extenuating circumstances, sire," protested Zahir. "It's not like he randomly assaulted her. If she was flirting with him, he had reason to believe that she wanted to have intercourse with him."

"She made it clear that she did not," his knightmaster countered sharply. "Rape is rape no matter how you cut it, Zahir."

"I still say that if a woman dresses and flirts like a whore, she shouldn't raise a ruckus when people treat her like one, Your Majesty," scoffed Zahir.

"Just because a woman doesn't meet your high standards of modesty, she doesn't deserve to be raped." King Jonathan shook his head, frowning at his squire.

"I didn't say she did." Zahir scowled, since nobody seemed to be understanding a concept that was quite apparent to him. "I'm not saying that anything justifies rape; I'm saying things influence rape. I'm saying that a woman who does things that have been known to influence rape is being stupid, and that a man who rapes a woman who was tempting him is less of a monster than a man who randomly assaults a woman."

"A woman isn't responsible for how her dress style impacts a man." His knightmaster's gaze pierced into him.

"I didn't say she was." Asking himself whether he was horrible at expressing himself or if everyone else he was talking to was just thickheaded today, Zahir folded his arms over his chest. "The man is responsible for his action—raping her—and she is responsible for her action—how she flirted and dressed."

"A northern woman who flirts and walks around without a veil has committed no crime, whereas a Bazhir male who rapes any woman has." King Jonathan halted and grabbed Zahir's wrists to ensure that he had his squire's full attention. "Listen to me, Zahir."

"You must have a low opinion of your ability to interest people if you interrupt yourself just to tell the individual you're speaking with to listen to you, sire," mumbled Zahir. It had always vexed him when adults did that, because, as far as he was concerned, if what they had to say was important, he would listen anyway. If it wasn't, he was probably going to end up ignoring them anyhow.

"Don't be insolent, Squire, and listen to me closely," the king reprimanded. He paused for a moment, and then went on, "I understand your arguments, but I don't agree with them."

"If you understood my arguments, you'd agree with them, Your Majesty," cut in Zahir, lifting his chin defiantly.

"Interrupting is rude, Zahir, and I just told you not to be impertinent. Besides, if you are going to interrupt, at least make sure your comment is sensible and adds to the discussion, which your remark didn't." King Jonathan arched an eyebrow, tightening his grip on Zahir's wrists slightly. "I certainly don't have to agree with your arguments in order to understand them. In this case, I will never believe that a woman bears any responsibility for being raped, because rape is such a horrid, traumatizing appearance that I doubt even the most dim-witted would seek it out. I definitely refuse to believe that rape is an appropriate consequence for not wearing a veil or for flirting. If you still feel otherwise, I urge you to re-examine your conceptions of justice and compassion."

"If you say so, Your Majesty." Zahir's lips twisted. He didn't agree—at least not completely—with what his knightmaster said, but he didn't feel clever enough to argue further right now. Phrased simply, he couldn't articulate his beliefs nearly as well as the king could express his.

"You used that response earlier with my wife, and I'm getting tired of hearing it from you, Squire," the king told him. "It's a condescending way of passive-aggressively stating that you disagree with an authority figure who you think is insane but will go along with what they say because you feel you can't argue with them further."

"I can't argue with you further, sire." Zahir glared bitterly at his knightmaster. "All you want to do is convert me into a progressive, so what's the point in debating anything with you?"

"It's not my objective to turn you into a progressive." Finally, King Jonathan released Zahir's wrists and the two of them continued down the corridor. "The greatest personal joy I can derive from training you is watching you grow into the man you are supposed to be, which isn't a copy of me. In fact, I actually hope that you will maintain some, but not all, of your more conservative tendencies as you mature. When I came to the throne, I felt that there were many changes that needed to be made in Tortall, and I still feel that way. However, too much change too quickly isn't wise, either. Countries that alter everything too rapidly plunge into chaos. That's why a progressive era is best followed by a conservative one and vice versa. My wife and I comprehend that, which is why we raised the Crown Prince to revere tradition more than either of us do."

Wishing that his knightmaster wasn't in the habit of making astonishing declarations in a matter-of-fact manner that implied what he was establishing was as clear as daylight, Zahir gaped at the king and muttered, "About this whole rape issue, Your Majesty, maybe I can't agree with all your arguments, but I think I understand them at least."

"It's good to see that you are learning some diplomacy from me." Here, King Jonathan clasped his shoulder and added, "I don't mean to criticize you excessively, Zahir. I am proud of how you intervened on Myra's behalf."

"If one of my sisters or my mother was in Myra's position, I'd want someone to intervene on their behalf, sire." Shrugging and staring at his feet as they moved down the hallway, Zahir discovered that he was better at arguing than accepting praise.

"The fact remains that you could have run away and nobody would have known," the king reminded him. "Staying to fight required moral courage."

"I would have known, and the gods would have known." Zahir shook his head. "I would have cared if I turned a blind eye to a young woman getting raped, but I'm not sure the gods would have cared if I did. After all, they didn't do anything to help her."

"You might consider that the gods acted through you when you interceded on Myra's behalf," the king observed softly. "After all, the conscience inside you that was roused when you witnessed Myra being raped was a gift from them."

"I don't see why the gods would wait until she had already been raped to interfere, Your Majesty," snorted Zahir.

"Being eternal, the gods take a longer view of time than mortals can understand without a major disruption of brain tissue, Squire," King Jonathan answered. "More often than we would like, they choose to employ their powers to bring goodness out of suffering rather than to prevent suffering."

About to state that it was cruel of the gods to allow suffering at all, Zahir was chopped off before he could begin when his knightmaster commented, "Although I'm proud of you for defending Myra, I don't want you to make a habit of engaging in fistfights as you did in the pages' wing. I assure you that the only reason you saw a healer this time was because I was convinced that you were on the right side."

"I'm always on the right side, my liege," glowered Zahir. "When I fought in the pages' wing and when I confronted Myra's rapist, I was fighting for tradition. Hazing is as much a warrior tradition as defending weak women is. You can even argue that hazing Keladry was defending a weak woman by trying to convince her that a knight's path wasn't for her."

"Women aren't weak," King Jonathan chided, as they turned down the hallway that led to the royal chambers and Zahir's room. "I thought you might have figured that out by now given how close you are to some female Riders."

"It's a fact that the average woman is shorter and less muscular than the average male, sire." Unfazed, Zahir shrugged as they passed the royal suite. "If women weren't weaker than males, it would be unlikely that just about every society would confine them to the role of wife and mother. If women weren't weak, Myra wouldn't have been raped, because she would have been able to fend off that sentry. Physically, women are unable to protect themselves from men, just as men are powerless against the temptations of women. It's a fatal combination, but you can either acknowledge it and protect weak women, or you can insist that women are as strong as men and act all shocked when they can't defend themselves against a rapist."

"Or you can acknowledge that women are strong, not infringe on their rights just as you wouldn't violate the rights of anyone else, and champion them as you would anybody else when you see an injustice committed against them," his knightmaster pointed out dryly.

"I was raised to believe that you respect the strength of men and defend the delicacy of women." As he opened the door to his bedroom, Zahir glanced over his shoulder at the king and inquired, "May I ask you a question, Your Majesty?"

"Of course." King Jonathan nodded. "What is it, Zahir?"

"I—I never really thought about rape before," Zahir hedged. "It's depraved, and I was taught that you shouldn't contemplate depravity too much unless you wish to become evil yourself, but seeing Myra made me ask why that man forced himself on her. It made me wonder why people had to lust after one another, why they were so driven to possess each other, why people derive pleasure from having power over others, and why people were so happy when they caused someone else anguish. All of it is sick, and none of it makes any sense, even if I've been guilty of the same crimes. Being guilty of the same things just makes it more confusing, if anything. I just want to know why human nature is so perverse." By the end of this speech, his hesitancy was gone, replaced by frustration, because it was so terrible to not understand what compelled him and everyone else to do reprehensible things.

"You want to understand the nature of evil," murmured the king, stroking his black beard. "Well, you certainly aren't alone in that desire. Scholars have been confronting that conundrum for centuries. Some have even devoted their whole lives to wrestling with that issue."

"Sounds like fun, sire." Thinking that the surest route to absolute insanity was contemplating all the lunatic things you and other beings did, Zahir wrinkled his nose.

"Most of those scholars were rather insular to say the least, yes." Flashing all of his white teeth in a brief smile, Zahir's knightmaster used his magic to light a set of candles on the short table beside Zahir's sleeping mat. "Still, a person cannot be considered mature until he has confronted the problem of evil, and from the standpoint of just about anyone in the Eastern Lands, that involves looking at the root of the human experience of evil—the Undoing."

"Does everything have to come back to religion with you, Your Majesty?" grumbled Zahir, mutinously wondering if it was possible that religion itself was the root of all evil if everything always seemed to come back to it, and there was so much that was obviously defective in the world.

"I am supposed to be training you to be the next Voice, Squire, which means that, yes, we are going to have many conversations that are focused upon religion." King Jonathan's eyes gleamed at him. "Speaking of which, I haven't given you a proper lesson on becoming the Voice since we talked about the Bazhir creation story. Now is as good a time as any to examine the Undoing, I think."

"Aren't you planning on interrogating the man who raped Myra?" he reminded his knightmaster.

"That can wait until we are done with our lesson. People tend to be more talkative once they have been locked alone in a dungeon for awhile," the king responded, and Zahir flinched.

"Your Majesty should know that you are evil," he muttered.

"You should know that your cheekiness is not appreciated," countered his knightmaster, sitting on the sleeping mat and patting a spot beside him. "Come here."

Wishing that he had never asked his question since all he really wanted to do right now was sleep, Zahir complied.

"I trust that you are familiar with the story of the Undoing," King Jonathan remarked, arching an eyebrow at him.

"Of course, sire." Zahir nodded tersely. "When Mithros and the Goddess made man and woman, they only placed one restriction on our ancestors: the first man and woman weren't supposed to eat any of the pomegranates that grew on the tree in the center of the garden. Mithros warned the first man and woman not to eat the fruit of that tree, because if they did, the Black God would claim them for his own, while the Goddess advised them that if they ate from that tree, they would be cursed with the knowledge of good and evil. All things considered, it was a simple enough command, although Mithros and the Goddess could have put the wretched tree in a less tempting location if they really didn't want our ancestors to eat of the forbidden fruit—"

"Our ancestors could have resisted the impulse to disobey the will of the gods, but they chose not to," the king interjected. "It's best not to blame the gods for the downfall we picked for ourselves, Zahir. The gods made us strong enough to resist temptation, but we still succumbed to it."

"They should have made us stronger instead of passing judgment on weaknesses in mortals that they created for themselves in their own image." Resolutely, Zahir shook his head. "If we had the capacity for sin even before the Undoing, and we must have for the Undoing to even have occurred, then it's their fault."

"Blaming the gods for our actions is very ungrateful when the gods are the ones who gave us life in the first place." Before Zahir could devise an argument to this, King Jonathan waved his hand and ordered, "Go on, Squire. You are nowhere near done with the tale."

"Well, the first man and woman must have both been a shuffle short of playing cards since they hadn't eaten any fruit from the tree of knowledge yet," smirked Zahir. "Your Majesty, they made a habit of staring at the forbidden fruit when they never should have looked at it at all. If they were smart, they would have understood that just about nothing hurts more than desiring something you can't have, so it's best not to look at what you aren't allowed to have, because the instant you glance at it, it will exert a dreadful power over you. Anyway, our stupid ancestors made a daily ritual of just gazing at the boughs of forbidden fruit. Some of the lesser gods, who were created when Mithros and the Goddess made the universe, who had rebelled against them already, and who had, as a punishment for their disobedience, been cast down to the lowest spheres of the Divine Realms and the mortal world where they became known as Immortals, noticed this trend. One morning, a Stormwing approached the man and woman. He managed to persuade the woman to eat the pomegranate, and she, in turn, tempted the man into taking a bite of the forbidden fruit. Then, staring at each other, they realized for the first time that they were naked and were ashamed. Hurriedly, they cut fig leaves and wrapped them around their bodies. Mithros and the Goddess noticed that they were no longer naked and descended from the Divine Realms. Upon seeing Mithros and the Goddess, the man and woman concealed themselves in the bushes. When Mithros asked the man why he had hidden himself, he said he did so because he was naked. Then, when Mithros asked how he had known that, he admitted that he had eaten the forbidden fruit, but only because the woman had made him. When the Goddess demanded why the woman had done such a thing, she blamed her actions on the Stormwing. Both the man and the woman then turned to Mithros and the Goddess in sincere repentance. Mithros and the Goddess forgave them, but still expelled them from the perfect garden."

"Exactly," King Jonathan said when Zahir had finished. "The Bazhir account of the Undoing differs considerably from many accounts of the Undoing common throughout the Eastern Lands. Most other accounts emphasize the fact that there is some inheritable sinful condition that befalls all of humanity as a result of the first man and woman's defiance of divine commands. To some, this inheritable sinful condition is a tendency to rebel against the gods, whereas to others, it is defined as a desire for things of this world at the expense of what is sacred. However, the Bazhir story instead has Mithros and the Goddess forgive the man and woman, indicating that no such hereditary sin exists in Bazhir theology. To the Bazhir mind, because the gods are the epitome of justice, they would not hold someone accountable for a sin that individual did not commit."

"It doesn't really matter whether you're born with the taint of an original sin or not, sire," mumbled Zahir, who was convinced that, no matter what any Bazhir religious authority argued on the contrary, the nature of humanity was rotten at best. "We're all born into a corrupt world, and we'll end up mirroring that even if we don't want to, and it was the merciful, fair gods who had no problem thrusting us out into a wicked world."

"We're imperfect creatures who belong in an imperfect world, Zahir," his knightmaster educated him mildly.

"Meaning that the gods always intended for us to inhabit an imperfect world," scowled Zahir. "Meaning, Your Majesty, that they designed us to mess up just so they could punish us, and conveniently blame everything on us."

"I think, Squire, that it is you who seeks to place the fault with the gods," the king observed wryly, arching an eyebrow.

"The gods are always babbling on about how they are omnipotent, aren't they, sire?" demanded Zahir, shrugging. "Well, if they claim to control everything, I don't see why I shouldn't blame them for all the evils in the world."

"I think you are missing a very important point of the story of the Undoing," King Jonathan corrected him. "A major part of the tale is the fact that everyone is responsible for his or her own actions. You can blame someone else for leading you astray, but that doesn't absolve you of your share of the guilt. When you choose to do wrong, no matter how much you are tempted, you are accountable."

"But if you lead someone astray as the Stormwing and the woman did, you are guilty, as well, aren't you, Your Majesty?" Zahir's eyes narrowed as an idea occurred to him.

"Tempting somebody into doing something wrong is an action an individual will be held accountable for, yes," confirmed his knightmaster.

"Then I was right, sire, when I said that Myra was responsible for tempting the Bazhir guard into raping her," Zahir declared, crossing his arms over his chest.

"In order to be held accountable for leading someone astray, you must now that you are dragging that person into sin," replied the king shortly, his patience with Zahir's logic in this matter clearly wearing thin. "I do not believe that Myra intended to cause Masud to commit the crime of raping her. Thus, as I have explained to you several times now, she is not guilty."

"I think you just make stuff up as you go along to suit your arguments, Your Majesty," Zahir grumbled.

"Well, I think that you have an excessive amount of pride, which this story plainly depicts as humanity's greatest weakness," snapped King Jonathan, his blue eyes lancing into his squire.

"I know the Bazhir say that pride is the greatest flaw of humanity." Haughtily, Zahir tossed his head. "Yet, the Bazhir are not a humble people, sire, and we would have been overrun entirely by northerners if we were."

"You were interested in the nature of evil, Zahir." The king's hands closed around his shoulders. "Perhaps you would want to know, then, that the root of all evil is pride. Pride led the lesser gods now referred to as the Immortals to rebel against Mithros and the Goddess. Pride made the man and woman defy the gods and eat the pomegranate. Pride is what prevents us from submitting to the will of the gods—"

"And submitting to the will of the gods is what being a Bazhir is all about," whispered Zahir. Looking at his knightmaster shrewdly, he remarked, "To the Bazhir, the most important moral obligation is to submit to the will of the gods, but the northern priests and priestesses preach differently. I would know because Lord Wyldon made us attend dawn services at the Mithran chapel every Sunday during page training. The northern priests and priestesses say that the most important thing is loving one another as the gods—supposedly—love you. Are the priests and priestesses of the north aware that you harbor such blasphemous views, Your Majesty?"

"I account to the gods, and not to men, Squire," King Jonathan responded, his tone firm as he relinquished his grip on Zahir's shoulders. "However, I do not believe that the Bazhir teaching in this in any way contradicts the northern one. If you think about it, when you submit to the will of the gods, you are loving others as they love you, and when you love others as the gods love you, you are submitting to the will of the gods. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and actually complement each other well. People who see a contradiction in the two views don't know as much about religion as they would like to believe and have missed seeing the forest for all the trees."

"Oh." As often happened after the king expressed his more unconventional viewpoints, Zahir found that he was choking on his own tongue and couldn't, for the life of him, concoct an intelligible comment.

"Now that you are finally speechless, I would like to give you a memory of the Undoing." As he frequently did when words utterly abandoned his squire, King Jonathan grinned.

Noting sourly to himself that he was glad his inarticulateness was amusing to one of them, Zahir obediently lay face-down on his sleeping mat. After he had received the memory of creation, he imagined that he would have no problems receiving this one, but, as soon as the king's hand reached under his shirt, making contact with his back, he involuntarily stiffened and slipped out of the man's touch.

"I'm not—" his knightmaster began.

"Going to hurt me," completed Zahir through clenched teeth as he bullied his tense spine into relaxing. "I know."

His brain did, anyway. However, his reflexes still needed some convincing, and maybe they always would.

"Your father really got far too rough with you," sighed the king, and Zahir didn't need to see the man to know that he was shaking his head.

"He was a good man," Zahir insisted through a clogged throat, fully aware that his words didn't negate King Jonathan's. "He didn't mean any harm."

Of course, the fact that his father hadn't intended any harm didn't mean that his actions didn't have negative consequences, but Zahir wasn't going to establish that aloud. None of the Bazhir women or children in his tribe who limped around, trying vainly to conceal purple bruises under their clothing, ever did, either.

His lip curling, he thought that maybe he had been wrong about the Bazhir being prideful. Perhaps they were very skilled at submitting, after all, since they were even willing to believe that they were pushed around for their own benefit, and possibly that delusion was the greatest weakness of humanity. Then again, maybe the conviction that the one who beat you had no ill intentions was just a byproduct of pride. Everything was all so confusing, and the wonderful part was that after enough cuffs to the head, you didn't care about discerning pride from humility. All you were worried about was not getting slapped again.

"I wish that people who were abused would stop defending their abusers." King Jonathan's voice was soft.

Zahir longed to respond that he wished that people like the king would understand that nobody wanted to be labeled as abused because of their excessive humility or pride. Unfortunately, the words stuck like glue to the roof of his mouth, and his brain ultimately lost track of them as warmth flowed into him from the king's palms, which were now resting upon his back.

Within a second of when the warmth began to seep into him, Zahir was transported back to the fecund garden he had been yanked out of when the creation memory concluded. The sun was overhead, but it was heating, rather than baking, his shoulders, and his eyes were riveted upon a tree with a hundred boughs that were all laden with mouth-watering pomegranates.

Staring up at the tantalizing fruits, he felt helplessness swamp his being. Mithros and the Goddess had told him that he was free to eat the fruit of any tree in this garden except the pomegranates from this tree. All the fruits in the garden were luscious, but, somehow, he knew that these pomegranates would taste more succulent than all the other fruits combined.

Yet, they were prohibited to him, and it was really stupid that he and the woman kept coming here every day to admire fruit they would never be able to devour.

"Why don't you eat one of those pomegranates you're staring at with such yearning?" suggested a peculiar creature who appeared to have half of a human body attached to half of a bird's and who must have been one of the gods' mistakes.

"We don't eat the fruit because the gods have prohibited it," he answered for himself and the woman beside him, who was also gaping adoringly at the pomegranates.

"Do you know why the gods have forbidden you to sample these pomegranates?" inquired the peculiar creature in a silky fashion. "It's because those pomegranates have the power to make you both equal to the gods."

Equal to the gods…That would be magnificent, and forbidden, but prohibited only because the gods wouldn't want rivals. The fruit looked infinitely sweeter now.

"Eating the fruit will kill us," murmured the woman, and he recognized that she was as enthralled as he was by the new power that had been ascribed to the pomegranates.

"It won't," the unusual creature assured her smoothly. "The gods themselves have eaten these pomegranates, and none of the gods have died."

He watched, open-mouthed, as the woman snatched a pomegranate, and bit into it, her teeth tearing into the tender flesh.

"Mmm," she mumbled, and he knew it must have been a thousand times more delicious than he could possibly have imagined.

Juice dribbling down her jaw, she offered the pomegranate to him, and he plunged his teeth into it. It tasted sweet at first. Then, the sweetness was replaced by a sickening bitterness, and he could see on the woman's face that the experience of eating the forbidden fruit had been equally tainted for her.

Defiance wasn't nearly as delicious as he had envisioned when he didn't even comprehend what it was, and, now that he gazed on the woman, he realized for the first time that he was truly a separate entity than her. The two of them weren't one, after all. They had different bodies, and, if they had different bodies, she could be absorbing every inch of his skin with her eyes as he was drinking in every bit of hers.

His cheeks aflame, he tugged leaves off a nearby fig tree and clutched them about himself. He was so ugly, and he didn't want anyone looking at him. The price of defiance and pride was humiliation, and he was learning that the hard way…

Oh, but an impossibly stern voice was calling out his name. Reflexively, even though he knew it couldn't shield him, he leapt behind a bush, and saw the woman, who had also wrapped herself in fig leaves, do the same.

"Why are you hiding?" demanded the same voice.

"I heard your voice, and I was ashamed, because I am naked," he muttered, stumbling out of the undergrowth with the woman at his heels.

"Did you eat the forbidden fruit?" Mithros' shout made the ground tremble.

"I did, but the woman made me." Desperate to throw the agony of his failure and embarrassment at someone else's feet, he jabbed an accusing finger at the woman.

"Is this true?" The Goddess' tone as she addressed the woman was frigid enough to halt the blood in his veins, and he felt a surge of remorse for blaming the woman for his own frailty.

"The Stormwing tempted me," stammered the woman. Then, she knelt on the ground and rested her forehead against the dirt. "Forgive me, Great Mother and Mithros. I should never have disobeyed you or imagined that I could be the peer of either of you."

"Forgive me." He could feel his knees crumbling as he fell to the earth and placed his forehead on the ground. "I should never have been so weak."

"You are forgiven." Now, the Goddess' tone was as soothing as a burbling brook.

"However," added Mithros, as inexorable as granite, "you must both leave this garden."

At that pronouncement, he experienced such a jolt of anguish—the revelation that his pride, his defiance, and his inability to resist temptation had cost him paradise was too much for him to bear—and, suddenly, Zahir was tugged back to the present.

"That was awful, sire," Zahir choked out, burrowing his head into the pillow on his sleeping mat. The salty wetness that seared into his cheeks when he did so informed him that he was crying.

"Yes, the destruction of the Undoing is much more painful than the beauty of creation," agreed King Jonathan quietly, giving Zahir's shoulder a tender squeeze.

His father would have thrashed him for sobbing like this, he thought, and somehow that notion gave him the courage to rasp out, "I was wrong about Myra being at all to blame for what happened to her, wasn't I, Your Majesty?"

Losing your virginity without your consent had to be about as horrid as losing paradise through your own folly and frailty.

"I'm afraid you were, yes," his knightmaster affirmed grimly.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Myra hated all men after how I hit her and Masud raped her," mumbled Zahir, rolling over to look at King Jonathan.

"You did save her," the king reminded him. "Actions speak louder than words, Squire."

"You only say that, sire, because my words were terrible." Miserably, Zahir shook his head.

"All any of us can do is repent and try not to become repeat offenders, Zahir. Now, get some rest. Tomorrow you have to run around the temple seven times, stand from noon until sundown in the broiling sun for the rite of standing, and throw stones at three pillars."

"Sounds easy compared to tonight's challenges, Your Majesty." Zahir yawned as the king shut his door, and he was asleep before it even occurred to him to blow out his candles.


	18. Chapter 18

Author's Note: There's no rape in this chapter, although there is some rather gruesome violence, so when you review, you can vote on whether or not I should see a therapist.

Stoned

Two afternoons later, the sun was burning down on the elegant balcony overlooking the outdoor gardens of the Persopolis castle, which usually only housed a variety of prickly, verdigris cacti, but today was teeming with shouting and laughing Bazhir. Even with the shade afforded by the colorful cloth overhanging the balcony, Zahir's back and shoulders were baking, and he didn't know how the multitude below him could withstand the heat. He would have sweated into nothing more than a puddle by now, but the people below him were still acting as though they were attending a carnival.

Of course, they weren't at a carnival. Yesterday had been the day of pilgrimage—the day devoted to commemorating the rites the first Voice and his family had observed before founding Persopolis. That meant that today was the day of purging before the month of purifying fasting began. Basically, that meant that it was a day dedicated to punishing criminals. Already, the gossipmongers had been beaten, the thieves had lost their right hands, and those convicted of gross dishonesty were in the process of having their tongues forcibly removed.

Staring down at the leering masses below, Zahir felt nausea bloom in his stomach. He would never be able to understand how people could just gobble down snacks as though something mildly entertaining was happening for their enjoyment while in front of them beings lost their hands or tongues.

Gods above, he had always hated this day among his tribe. Ever since he was little, he had always tried to plead illness—he wasn't even lying, since seeing limbs lopped off people before a delighted throng caused vomit to blaze a path up his throat—so he could remain in the family tent and only have to hear the catcalls of the crowd, instead of witnessing the whole gory spectacle. However, his father had always hissed at him that chiefs did not cringe from justice. Then, before Zahir could protest further, his father would drag him out of the tent. If tears streaked down his cheeks or shone like stars in his eyes, his father's rod would rip into his shoulders that evening, because men and certainly chiefs did not show weakness. If their hearts were breaking, they had to make sure they didn't shed a tear. If they felt compassion, they had to conceal it behind a hard, expressionless face.

Still, it was days like this one that made him wish he were blind and deaf, he noted inwardly as he returned to the present with a jolt when King Jonathan, who was sitting on a carpet with his wife and Lord Raoul, said, "Zahir, please get us more water."

Scowling because as far as he was concerned, the king, the queen, and the commander of the Own had enough date and pomegranate juice before them to keep any six beings hydrated for a month, Zahir bowed and left the balcony. Wondering vaguely why he was annoyed by any excuse to avoid seeing the bloody Bazhir justice, he moved through the royal quarters down to the kitchens, where he fetched a jug of cold water.

When he returned to the balcony, pitcher in hand, and caught sight of what was transpiring in the garden below, he froze. Six people—one of them he recognized as the man who had raped Myra—were standing in the front of the crowd that was now hurling insults and stones at them. Blood soaked the sand around them and seeped from gashes on their heads and chests.

Since his fingers were numb with horror, the jug should have remained firmly within his grasp. Instead, though, his grip on the pitcher slackened, and the carafe clattered onto the tile floor, spilling water all over Queen Thayet's dress and headcovering, which probably were expensive enough to keep a peasant family out of rags for a year.

"I beg your pardon, Your Majesty," he stuttered, appalled, the second he registered what he had done. Deliberately drenching an insolent, ugly merchant was one thing, but unintentionally soaking a queen who was widely regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world was another.

Panicking, he wondered if he ought to snatch a napkin and attempt to dry her off. That would be a good idea if only it didn't involve touching her. Among the Bazhir, it was considered immodest if they happened to so much as brush fingers with each other, and he did not want to be accused of unchaste conduct with his knightmaster's wife…

"Never mind, Zahir," Queen Thayet reassured him calmly, drying off the wettest parts of her outfit with a handful of napkins. "It's only water that you spilled, so my clothes haven't even been stained. Besides, in this heat, it was nice to have a small bath."

Zahir knew he should have been comforted by the fact that the queen wasn't furious at him for her unexpected dunking, but instead he felt disgusted with himself as his eyes riveted again on the beings getting stoned below. He was a callous monster to have forgotten even for a moment the brutal scene that was unfolding below him. Shame lanced through him as he realized that not only did he not possess the courage to intervene on behalf of those who were being executed in such a gruesome fashion, but he also didn't even have the nerve it required to watch the execution. Coward didn't even begin to cover what a piece of scum he was…

"You look pale," added Thayet, patting the carpet next to her. "Come sit before you faint."

Absently, his horrified gaze still locked on the crowd stoning the people and his throat clogging, Zahir settled on the rug beside the queen.

His people were so sick, he thought, gawking down at the mob as three of the individuals being stoned collapsed on the ground, and rocks continued to bang into their bodies until the bloodied figures ceased all movement. Then, as dizziness swamped him, he watched as the crowd pelted the remaining three people with stones. Perhaps the brutal, broiling environment made Bazhir blood too hot, he commented to himself, because there was something in every Bazhir that made them equate justice with some amount of bloodshed. He knew that because he was one himself, and he understood that his bloodlust didn't end with a desire to shed northern blood—no, he possessed a twisted craving to shed the blood of his own people. He could act like a northerner well enough to fool most beings, but he was still a savage on the inside, where it counted, because Bazhir blood would always out.

"Drink some juice," ordered Lord Raoul, thrusting a glass of pomegranate juice into his hand. "It will boost your adrenaline again."

Obediently, Zahir raised the cup to his lips and swallowed. The juice had barely slid past his tongue, however, before he gagged.

"It tastes too much like blood, my lord," he coughed, placing the glass firmly on the carpet and mentally vowing that he would never so much as sip pomegranate juice again, because it would remind him too much of the horrid slaughter he had witnessed today.

"Was this your first time seeing something like this, lad?" asked Lord Raoul. "My boys always get as weak-kneed as my great-aunt the first time they see a group of bandits hung on the gallows."

"I'm not weak-kneed, sir," Zahir muttered, wishing that he couldn't see the last three people being stoned fall to the ground and get bombarded by rocks until they stopped moving forever. "Besides, I have seen things like this before. I've seen my father beat and cut the limbs of plenty of tribesmen."

Since he was positive that it would make him appear as delicate as a court lady, he didn't mention that witnessing such things always made him nauseous. He also didn't say just how difficult it was to prevent tears from welling in his eyes and streaming down his cheeks when he saw his father carry out such harsh desert justice.

"But you've never seen a stoning?" the king pressed, arching his eyebrows.

"No, I haven't, sire." Zahir could feel his hands trembling now, and balled them into fists so that nobody would notice this evidence of how distraught he truly was. "Nobody in my village ever committed a crime severe enough to warrant stoning while my father was chief." Jerking his head in the direction of the bloody sand below, he went on, "I don't want to see another stoning ever again. They just prove that everyone is right when they spit on us Bazhir as savages."

"The Bazhir aren't savages," pronounced Queen Thayet crisply. "They have an ancient, fierce law code they abide by just like the K'miri tribesmen. Sometimes that law code is harsh, but that doesn't make it barbaric. After all, a truly barbaric society doesn't have any rules whatsoever, and I daresay that doesn't apply to the Bazhir or the K'miri peoples."

"The law in the rest of Tortall allows for hangings, beheadings, and, in rare cases, drawing and quartering," her husband put in. "The legal code in Galla, Maren, Tusaine, and Tyra allows for much the same. Executions are not uncommon in Carthak, the Yamani Islands, the Copper Isles, or Scanra. In short, Squire, most societies have the death penalty, so it's hard to accuse the Bazhir of being primitives when a majority of the world is in the same place."

"Stonings are worse than hangings and beheadings, sire," insisted Zahir, setting his jaw. "Hangings and beheadings involve one executioner, not a screaming crowd of them, who are all convinced that because they all were involved in throwing the stones, none of them—instead of all of them—were responsible for killing the criminal."

"Yes, our glorious hangings and beheadings with our cheering crowds eagerly awaiting an execution that they hope will be as painful as possible so as to maximize their enjoyment of the entertainment," remarked Lord Raoul. "We like to hire one executioner to do our dirty work for us, so that we can pretend that if we stood in the crowd gleefully crying out for a person's execution, we aren't responsible for their death at all. Perhaps the Bazhir are just being more honest than we are by allowing some blood to actually stain their hands."

"They only let it stain everyone's hands, my lord, so that everybody is equally guilty, and nobody is actually responsible for what happened." Zahir massaged his temples, feeling as though his head was on the verge of ripping into fifty pieces. Looking at the king, he asked, "Your Majesty, do you mind if I lay down for awhile? I have a bit of a headache."

"Go ahead," responded King Jonathan, waving a hand in dismissal.

Gratefully, Zahir rose, bowed, and exited the balcony. He hurried out of the royal chambers, where he could hear that sound of Princess Vania giggling as she played a game with her nursemaids in her rooms, and down the corridor to his bedroom.

As soon as he had shut the door, he crumbled onto his sleeping mat. Shutting his eyes, he willed the sight of the stonings out of his mind so he could rest, but it was as though the very action of attempting to banish that memory prompted it to resurge, more potent than ever, and conquer his brain.

Against his will, he heard the taunts and laughs of the crowd ringing inside his ears like the grating clangor of an out of tune bell. He heard the sounds of rocks smacking into flesh and felt like it was his own skin that the stones were smashing into. He saw the blood on the heads and chests of the criminals and tasted it in his own mouth. He saw, as though the blackness behind his eyes made everything brighter in his memory, the blood from the gashes soak into the sandy garden, where he knew the rainfall, however strong, would never be able to wash it away. He sipped pomegranate juice to drown out the taste of blood and found his mouth flooded with the metallic taste of it all the more. Today wasn't a day of purging; it was a day of tainting. Today wasn't a day of justice, but rather one of madness.

Stifling a howl as he realized that he would never be free of the memory of the stonings, Zahir shoved himself off his sleeping mat. There was no way he would be able to sleep now, he grumbled mentally as he left his room. Of course, he thought as he headed down the hallways and stairwells toward the indoor garden, he would probably just have ended up having nightmares about stoning if he had been able to fall asleep, so maybe his current insomnia wasn't such a terrible handicap.

When he opened the door to the indoor garden, his nostrils were deluged with the fragrant scent of purple sage, oleander, lantana, and fairy duster. Together, the blended aroma of these flowers was almost powerful enough to wipe the stench of blood from his nose, although not his memory. Admiring the beautiful plants as he plopped onto an ebony bench, he noted inwardly that it was good to have a reminder that the desert's ruthless climate didn't kill off all plants except the barbed cacti. Even in the stark confines of the desert, loveliness could be found if you knew where to look, and maybe that beauty was all the more valuable because it was so scarce and challenging to uncover.

He didn't know how long he had been gazing at the flowers until his focus was broken by the soft sound of footsteps approaching on the sand pathway. When he tilted his head in the direction of the footfalls, he saw Trevor.

"You look as though you were devoured by a kraken who found you disagreeable to its stomach and barfed you back up again," observed Trevor, sliding onto the bench beside Zahir.

"I'm not the one who was eaten by the kraken," Zahir replied brusquely. "The ones that were eaten aren't going to be vomited up again. They're gone forever."

"You saw the stonings, didn't you?" Trevor bit his lip.

"Yes." That was all Zahir could choke out through his numb lips, but, as far as he was concerned, that one word contained more than enough information.

"I couldn't bear to watch those," whispered Trevor. "I can never bear to see hangings and beheadings at home. Executions just strike me as an incredible loss of potential, and the bloodlust of the crowd makes me sick. Maybe this sort of thing would nauseate me less if I had more battle training."

"It wouldn't," Zahir informed him tartly, shaking his head. "Killing someone in battle is done because you've got to survive, and because you have an obligation to protect other people. Stoning someone to death is done just because you want to have an excuse to pelt somebody to death with rocks. As far as I can see, that should disgust you."

"I wish people everywhere would learn not to use violence to solve their problems, or at the very least would stop dragging their children along to executions. Children learn by watching their parents, and after growing up seeing their parents participate in such things, the children will believe there is nothing revolting about it." Sighing gustily, Trevor shook his head. "Well, I'd better return to Lord Conan. When the stonings were about to start, I asked for permission to visit the latrine, but, even allowing for a severe case of gastrointestinal distress brought on by foreign food, my absence is getting suspiciously long, so I should go back to my master now. Isn't it amazing how even diplomats take their students to executions as a learning experience?"

"Yes, it's amazing," agreed Zahir, unable to keep the flatness out of his voice as Trevor rose. "Talk to you later, Trevor, and may you see nothing that really causes you severe gastrointestinal distress."

Watching his friend leave the garden, Zahir sighed. It should have been a consolation to him that he wasn't the only one who saw how twisted stoning was, but it wasn't, because he and Trevor could do nothing to stop the insanity of stoning people. They were helpless, and being part of a group was of no benefit unless the group could actually achieve something. Complaining was useless, and action was everything.

Rubbing his forehead and resisting the temptation to bash his brains out in order to beat the memory of the stonings out of it, he stretched out on the bench and squeezed his eyes closed. Trying to block out the images of stonings spiraling around in his skull, he focused on the steady rhythm of air flowing in and out of his lungs, and the constant drum of his heart that was the background music to his whole life.

Right now, he didn't want to be a part of this merciless world, and the only way not to be a part of this cruel world was to no longer be himself. He could lose himself. After all, in a strange room, he had to empty himself into the darkness before he could sleep. Before he was asleep, he was himself. After he emptied himself for sleep, he was not himself, and, when he was filled with sleep, he never was. He could make himself become filled with sleep.

He didn't have a clue how long he lay there, trying to lose himself in oblivion before someone was shaking his shoulders.

"Go away," he mumbled, refusing to open his eyes, and rolling away from the hands that were shaking him. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that he was on a bench, and he would have toppled off it if the hands hadn't tugged him back onto it.

"That's no way to speak to your knightmaster." That was the king's voice, which meant that manners required Zahir at least open his eyes and sit up on the bench. As Zahir grudgingly opened his eyes and pushed himself upright, his knightmaster continued sternly, "You gave me quite the scare during the communion with the Voice a few minutes ago."

"I didn't participate in the communion with the Voice, Your Majesty," Zahir said, frowning.

"You may not have intended to do so, but your spirit did it, anyway, and you're lucky it did." King Jonathan's piercing gaze locked on his. "You may not have noticed, Squire, but all the memories I am giving you in your training to be the next Voice are gradually increasing your awareness of your body, and eventually will increase your awareness of the bodies of other Bazhir. When you shut your eyes and started focusing on your breath and heartbeat, you were meditating without knowing it. During meditation, any changes you make to your breath and heartbeat are real, even if they seem imaginary, which means that, yes, it is entirely possible to kill yourself when you mediate if that was what you were trying to do. Fortunately, you don't have the experience to do that yet, and you would have pulled yourself out of meditation before that happened even if I hadn't come to save you."

"I wasn't trying to kill myself, sire," Zahir protested, fires igniting in his cheeks. "Besides, you could have told me about this freaky new power to control my breath and heartbeat."

"I didn't know when the ability would show up in you, since it appears at different times in different students," his knightmaster snapped. "I also wasn't aware that I had a suicidal squire."

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," repeated Zahir, angry tears stinging his eyes. "I was just trying to lose myself. All I wanted was for the pain to stop."

"How is wanting to lose yourself so that the pain will cease any different from committing suicide, Zahir?" demanded the king icily, arching an eyebrow.

"I didn't really know that I had the power to lose myself like that." Zahir shook his head, as the stabbing ache returned to his forehead. "You shouldn't be mad at me for doing something I didn't even recognize I was doing, Your Majesty. It's not fair."

"You intended to lose yourself, so whether or not you had the power to stamp yourself out of existence is irrelevant," King Jonathan retorted. "I'm cross at you for intending to lose yourself like that."

"Well, when you see people getting stoned and you can't do anything to prevent it, I think you're more of a freak if you don't want to leave behind this nasty world," burst out Zahir, furious that his knightmaster didn't understand.

"You can't prevent or change anything when you are dead." As if to ensure Zahir's attention, King Jonathan clutched his shoulders. "In most cases, suicide is nothing more than a selfish, cowardly decision taken because a person isn't brave enough to face life any more, and doesn't care about all the grieving people who will be left behind. Killing yourself when you are young and have your whole life ahead of you is one of the stupidest things you could possibly do. Put simply, I'm appalled that you would even consider such a drastic solution to your temporary emotional problems."

"I wasn't supposed to lose myself forever," Zahir established through clenched teeth, aggravated that his knightmaster hadn't understood this simple concept yet. "I was only planning on losing myself for a little while, because when I was so overwhelmed not being myself seemed like the best—the only—cure."

"Problems don't disappear because you, however temporarily, cease to be," countered the king, unmoved.

"Very well, Your Majesty." Zahir's mouth tightened. "I'm sorry I got upset at seeing people stoned."

"You shouldn't apologize for being upset when that isn't the problem, Zahir. The problem is that you lost control and did something rash because you were upset." King Jonathan sighed. "Just promise me you won't try to lose yourself even for a short time ever again."

"I promise, sire." After all, he wasn't eager to die while he was still so young.

"Good." The king's tone was hushed. "Squire, you must understand that your life force usually blazes like a candle, so seeing you struggle to blow out your own candle is very disturbing."

Not wanting to think of himself as a candle fated to burn out and doomed to die sooner if he burned brightly, Zahir made no reply. Finally, his knightmaster went on, "The people who were stoned were all murderers, adulterers, or rapists. They were hardly innocents. You must remember that."

"They were still people, sire," argued Zahir, his spine stiffening. "That means they didn't deserve to die like they did—stoned to death by a cheering mob."

"They perpetrated crimes that by Bazhir law were punishable by stoning," King Jonathan answered gravely. "All of them were aware of the consequences their behavior would have if they were caught when they chose to break the law."

"The law should be fair." Obstinately, Zahir crossed his arms. "Your Majesty, it's not just that someone who commits rape or adultery should be stoned. If they didn't steal somebody else's life, what right do we have to take theirs?"

"The law gives me—and the chiefs of individual tribes—the right to make such judgments," stated his knightmaster levelly.

"You were the one who sentenced Masud and the others to death?" Zahir demanded, his jaw agape at the revelation that the king could really be so cold-hearted.

"As the Voice, it is my duty to judge the Bazhir who reside in Persopolis," the king reminded him somberly. "When I judge the Bazhir, I am obligated to do so according to their laws, which stipulate death for murder, adultery, and rape among other offenses."

"Of course." Zahir's face twisted with rancor. "In desert justice, there is never any room for proportion or mercy. If we punish just about every crime with execution, everyone will be too scared to put so much as a toe out of line."

"I'm surprised that you are so ardently opposed to the death penalty when you killed your own uncle for murdering your father," remarked King Jonathan, his eyebrows arching.

Flushing as he thought about how he had slain his uncle and how he had threatened Nadir with the same gory destruction, Zahir ducked his head and choked out, "I suspect that you think I'm a hypocrite to get all bent out of shape over this when I beheaded my own uncle, but that was different, sire. When I killed him, I did so because I was swallowed up with rage, so I didn't know what I was doing, but, when the crowd stoned Masud and the others, they knew exactly what they were doing, and they were exhilarated to be doing it."

"I won't deny that the bloodthirstiness of the masses watching or participating in an execution isn't enough to cause even the strongest stomach to churn." Here, King Jonathan tilted his squire's chin upward, so that their eyes were fixed on each other. "However, I am not about to force the Bazhir to do away with their custom of stoning their criminals."

"Why not, Your Majesty?" asked Zahir, unable to prevent acerbity from pervading his tone. "You've never had a problem messing with traditions at your whim in the past."

"Whereas you, my impertinent squire, have never been one to advocate change before," his knightmaster pointed out dryly. "Anyway, I will not make the Bazhir abandon their custom of stoning certain criminals for two main reasons. First of all, I respect the Bazhir culture, and I refuse to be the northern king who blunders onto the scene with my northern values and begins wrecking havoc with their ancient written and oral law codes. Second of all, capital punishment is legal in the rest of Tortall, and I do not happen to be opposed to the death penalty." Pausing, he sighed and then resumed, "Execution may seem harsh, Zahir, but it is necessary. There are certain offenses that people must not be permitted to get away with. Society would dissolve into chaos if there were no limits placed on people's conduct, and, with some beings, the only way to establish those limits is with severe punishment. The truth is that an execution is as much a warning for the audience as it is a final punishment for the criminal."

"Yes, sire," said Zahir, hanging his head again. His father had always provided similar explanations for why he had to beat and maim tribesmen who stole, cheated, or gossiped excessively. The problem was that some element inside him always rebelled against this brutal logic.

"I pass the death sentence when I have to, and I witness it being carried out when necessary," King Jonathan concluded, resting a hand on Zahir's shoulder. "I derive no pleasure from either of those decisions. In fact, such choices are agonizing for me to make, but it is my duty to follow through on them. My wife and I might be the most powerful beings in this realm, but even we are subject to the restrictions of the law. In short, like everyone else, we do what we must, not what we want to do."

"I'm sorry for getting so distressed about the stoning," whispered Zahir. "My father always beat me for getting tears in my eyes when he whipped or cut the hand off a tribesman. I guess I still need to improve my ability to suppress my emotions."

"You don't need to work on suppressing your emotions; you need to work on controlling your emotions," the king corrected. "Suppressing your feelings is just denying them and shoving them down inside you until they explode from you in a fashion that is often ruinous for yourself and others. Controlling your feelings is acknowledging them and then making the decision of whether to act on them and to what degree."

"I want to control my emotions," mumbled Zahir, chewing on his lower lip. "Sire, I see the logic behind what you are saying, but I just can't force myself to truly believe it."

"Somehow that doesn't shock me," commented his knightmaster, smiling slightly. "No matter what you'd like to think on the contrary, Zahir, you are a very emotional, not logical person, and your primary manner of interacting with the world is via your feelings, not through your reason. With your sarcasm and arrogance, you like to pretend that you are logical, but the very strength of your responses to things gives you away. For instance, if you were more of a thinker than a feeler, you would not harbor such hostility toward the gods for not saving your father. If you were naturally inclined toward logic, you might have doubted the gods as a result of his passing, but you would not have felt betrayed by them, and, thus, your reaction would have been less overpoweringly negative."

"What's all this mean, Your Majesty?" Zahir glowered, humiliated at being associated with the fickle emotionality of a female rather than the reliable rationality of a male.

"It means that when you learn to accept that, since your main mode of interacting with the world is emotional, you will always be prone to powerful feelings, you will be able to see how that trait is both a major strength and weakness of yours," explained King Jonathan. "Once that happens, you will finally stop denying that you are a very emotional individual. After you've finally stopped lying to yourself about that, you'll be able to start controlling your feelings, rather than just suppressing them."

"Men aren't supposed to be emotional, sire," Zahir grumbled. "They're supposed to be logical."

"Doubtlessly, such an enlightened notion came from your father," observed the king, his manner tart. "I imagine such a delusion was what prompted your father to beat you for not suppressing your emotions well enough."

"It was his job to teach me how to be a man, Your Majesty." Defiantly, Zahir lifted his chin.

"All the beatings in the world cannot change a person's personality." King Jonathan shook his head. "From where I am standing, I can assure you that your father's beatings have had considerably more damaging than beneficial impacts on you. If I were you, I would stop trying to suppress your emotions as your father strove to do when he beat you."

"I guess his beatings just taught me to suppress, not control, my emotions, and suppressing my tidal wave of emotions doesn't work," admitted Zahir reluctantly. "Maybe he wasn't a very good father, was he, sire?"

"As the father of six children, I can tell you that anyone who thinks parenting is easy has obviously never encountered young people before." Again, the king squeezed his shoulders. "Squire, I don't doubt that your father loved you very much and that he wanted to raise you to the best of his ability. I just think that his beliefs on how to raise you well were wrong-headed, and that, as you said, ended up making him not a very good father. In answer to your question, I'm sure that he loved you, but love isn't always enough to keep someone from becoming a poor father."

"I had some nice times with my father, too. He was the one who first taught me to ride and shoot a bow. It was he who taught me to read and write in both Common and the ancient language of the Bazhir, as well as how to do basic arithmetic. Also, as long as he didn't think you were challenging his authority, he was skilled at answering questions." Feeling remorseful over recalling the bad things his father had done, but not the good ones, Zahir hastened to add some of the more positives experiences he had with his father to the discussion. Then, meeting his knightmaster's eyes grimly, he stated, "I don't think I'll make a good Voice if I'm so emotional."

"That's why you need control," King Jonathan educated him wryly.

"Control doesn't work with me, Your Majesty." Zahir shook his head. "I couldn't be rational like you were when you sentenced those people to stoning and allowed them to be executed by the crowed. Even if I managed to sentence those people to be stoned, I would never have actually permitted it to happen. I know, because, when I discovered that Aisha had run away to become a Rider, I was furious and said I wanted to send her back to our tribe for a whipping. However, I never could have done that. After all, she's my sister, I love her, and I'll always try to protect her from a thrashing even if she deserves it. Even when she was little, I'd take the blame for her acts of mischief when I could. I didn't care that my father would hit me twice has hard as he would her; I just wanted to spare her pain. If I can't even be harsh with my own younger sister, how could I be with other Bazhir?"

"You killed your own uncle, so I do not doubt your ability to harden your heart when necessary," responded his knightmaster soberly. "As for your belief that feelers do not make skilled leaders, I will tell you that there are two main types of leaders out there. One type, like Lord Wyldon, relies on their logic to handle situations appropriately as well as to inspire confidence and obedience in people. The other type, like me, uses their charisma to encourage people to follow them. The first group is comprised largely of thinkers, while the second is mostly made up of feelers like you and me."

"You're a feeler, sire?" echoed Zahir, staring at the king as though he had just declared that he was a camel.

"I couldn't be able to manipulate the emotions of others half as well as I do if I weren't." King Jonathan chuckled for a moment and then continued more seriously, "The powerful passions that strong feelers are prone to often make us very charismatic, and our natural magnetism tends to increase as we develop a greater understanding of our own emotions. Our feelings are so overwhelming that they can easily dominate other people's. That's why it's important to remember that when you are charismatic, the burden is on you to channel other people's feelings in a good manner, because charisma is only as moral as the being using it is. Just as it is wise for leaders with strong thinking inclinations to keep themselves from becoming too cold by maintaining close bonds with feeler friends or family members, it is prudent for us feelers to find thinkers like my own loyal prime minister to remind us of what is rational."

"And almost killing yourself because you had to watch a few stonings isn't very rational is it, Your Majesty?" Zahir muttered, embarrassed by his own overreaction.

"No, it isn't," his knightmaster agreed in a crisp fashion. "Now, I want to make sure that you understand my decision to stone those people was in keeping with Bazhir law."

"How do you plan to do that, sire?" inquired Zahir, cocking his head. Whatever the king had in mind, he hoped that it wouldn't take long, because he was starting to feel very exhausted, and the headache from earlier was back with a vengeance.

"I want to give you a copy of this." As he established as much, King Jonathan withdrew a copy of the Bazhir scriptures, which consisted mainly of proverbs, laws, and songs, rather than stories, as most northern religious books did, and placed it delicately on Zahir's lap.

"Your Majesty, it's gorgeous." Awed, Zahir stared at the glittering golden cover. Flipping through the aged parchment carefully, he admired the vibrant paintings and neat letters, murmuring, "It's in the ancient language of the Bazhir."

"Of course it is." King Jonathan grinned. "According to Bazhir custom, it wouldn't be properly holy if it weren't, would it?"

"I suppose, as Voice, you do have an impeccable understanding of our religious traditions." Zahir couldn't help but smiling back before adding, "Sire, you don't need to give me a copy of the scriptures. I already have one."

"Ali Mukhtab gave this to me when I was studying to be Voice, and now I wish for you to have it," the king replied. "When the time comes, I would be honored if you choose to pass it onto whoever becomes your successor."

"I'm honored to have it, and I'll have to remember to be extra careful not to rip the parchment when I turn the pages, in that case," said Zahir, wondering if it was possible for a copy of the scriptures to be further sanctified by generations of Voices touching it, because that's how he felt when he gazed down at the tome his knightmaster had just given him.

"You need not be afraid to read from it." King Jonathan's eyes gleamed at him. "In fact, I would like you to read some of the scriptures every night, since that is the custom during the month of fasting, after all."

"I've already read the scriptures all the way through, Your Majesty," Zahir informed him. "My father insisted on it."

"In that case, you can refresh your memory and start memorizing passages. Many Bazhir like to memorize pieces of scripture, and, if you are to be the Voice you, like me, will eventually have to memorize the whole thing."

Wrinkling his nose because the idea of memorizing that much information was enough to increase the throbbing pain in his head, Zahir wanted to know, "What happens if I fail to memorize the passages I'm supposed to?"

"Then I'll be disappointed by your lack of progress, Squire." King Jonathan's gaze pierced into him. "However, I will not punish you, if that is what you are asking. When I train you, I'd like you to do as much as possible out of love and as little as possible out of fear."

"I've never heard an educational philosophy quite as crazy as that one, Your Majesty," snorted Zahir, rolling his eyes, and thinking that would be the approach of his progressive knightmaster. Maybe tomorrow the king would say Zahir could choose what he wanted to learn.

"Roald is running around the country as Lord Imrah's squire, and I won't see him again until Midwinter. Kalasin and Lianne are off training to be a lady at King's Reach, and I also won't be laying eyes on either of them until Midwinter. Liam and Jasson are busy with page training, so I don't talk with them as much as I used to. Only Vania remains in the nursery." King Jonathan shrugged. "Perhaps you just remind me of my oldest son."

"Sire, that makes no sense." This theory was so bizarre that Zahir burst out laughing. After all, none of his teachers had ever confused him and Roald, which was probably a good thing, since calling the Crown Prince by the wrong name might result in the teacher being asked to resign. "Prince Roald and I have nothing in common."

"That's not true." Gently, the king swatted his knee. "Both of you were born in the same year, have black hair, and are within an inch of each other's heights unless Roald has gone through another growth spurt since I saw him last. I have barely thought about your argument, Zahir, and I have already proved it wrong."


	19. Chapter 19

Author's Note: First of all, I apologize to everyone about taking an eon to update, but I was very busy studying for finals for a depressingly long time. Hopefully, I'll be able to update more frequently now that I'm on break. (If not, you do not have permission to shoot me, although you do have permission to nag me.)

Also, to change the topic completely, I'd like to note that while I, being an unoriginal person, borrowed much of the Bazhir culture from Islamic culture, I did not do so with the intent of offending anyone, since I have the utmost respect for Muslim people. Unfortunately, the demands of plot and the fact that I am writing within a fictional universe causes me to distort some things, which means that I would definitely urge people to investigate Islamic beliefs and culture for themselves instead of relying on my interpretation of Islam as altered to fit the Tortallan universe. In particular, I would like to point out to everyone that Islam is a strongly monotheistic religion, and so the polytheistic Bazhir are much closer to pre-Islamic beliefs in that regard.

Okay, I think that's all I plan to talk about in this very brief author's note. As such, I will finally move on with the story now…

Dance to the Death

Three evenings later, Zahir hovered awkwardly by the refreshment table along the wall of the ballroom. It felt weird to be attending a party he wasn't required to serve at, but it was even odder to do so during the month of fasting. Although he had always known that there were some Bazhir who believed that after the sun set during the month of fasting, it was appropriate to feast and celebrate the gods' bounty, he had been raised to think of such a perspective as ridiculous, since feasting during the evenings contradicted the whole point of fasting during the day. Now that he was observing the month of fasting for the first time in years, Zahir had decided that he would abide by his father's dictum of eating and drinking as little and as plain fare as possible after sundown.

Of course, he thought as he saw Bazhir men and women, separated by a thin screen in the main part of the ballroom, slide from the lively dance that accompanied the daf and tombak drums into a slower one that better suited the strumming of the oud and rebab, just the presence of musical instruments and dancing would have been enough to unsettle him. After all, he had been taught that all dancing and musical instruments were forbidden. While he could tolerate northerners, who had completely different beliefs and didn't understand the complex rules that governed moral behavior that he had been raised to adhere to, dancing and listening to music from their instruments, it made him uncomfortable to see Bazhir dancing to music from instruments. Music and dancing were prohibited by Bazhir law and led to immoral behavior. It irked him that some Bazhir didn't see that, arguing that dancing was acceptable as long as males and females were kept apart and everybody was dressed modestly, or that percussion instruments were allowed, or, worst of all, that all musical instruments were permissible as long as the instruments were employed to create lawful types of music.

Scowling, Zahir wondered how a prohibited instrument could produce anything but forbidden music. Of course, though, his progressive knightmaster would take the most lenient stance possible on issues of entertainment. After all, it would be easier for King Jonathan to balance his role as the Voice with his position as the leader of the northerners if he took the most liberal positions he could on matters of Bazhir law. Reconciling the demands of two very different cultures wasn't an easy thing to do, as Zahir knew from experience, but that didn't mean that he had to approve of all the compromises the king made to fulfill the impossible task of being all things to two peoples.

"You look rather stiff, you know." A lilting young woman's voice that reminded Zahir of the stringing oud commented, interrupting his mental griping. "A smile wouldn't be amiss at social events like this."

"I don't look stiff." Reflexively, Zahir bristled without even thinking that such an action caused him to contradict his words, and glared at the slender young lady, decked from her shoes to her headcovering in a vibrant shade of ginger, who had come up beside him. "Anyway, if I was interested in your opinion, I'd have asked for it."

"It's a sad day indeed when neighbors can't provide friendly advice to each other, Zahir ibn Alhaz," replied the young woman, her dark, ocher-lined, eyes glittering at him in mocking manner that informed him he was speaking to Nasira bint Mahmud, the daughter of a nearby chief.

"What a relief to see that you are as much a shrew as ever," he responded irritably, annoyed by the fact that his heart didn't pound as it once had every time he had spotted her. Clearly, his interest in her had been replaced by his attraction to Cait. Unfortunately, while Nasira represented a sensible marriage prospect for him, Cait didn't, and it infuriated him to know that he had so little control over his own desires. "In an ever changing world, it's reassuring to know that I can count on one thing to remain constant."

"I'm glad to see that you are as much of a killjoy as ever," answered Nasira, sipping from a goblet of sharbat, a cool, fruity beverage whose sweet aroma was enough to make Zahir's stomach growl. "What do you have against dancing and music, anyway?"

"Dancing and musical instruments are forbidden. Isn't that reason enough?" snorted Zahir, as much to release the tempting smell of sharbat from his nose as anything else.

"Not among my tribe." Nasira shrugged. "Among my tribe, music and dancing aren't prohibited. Frankly, I'm happy that they aren't, since without them, parties like this would be almost as boring as watching paint dry. What does your tribe do during celebrations if you aren't allowed to play music and dance?"

"We feast, we talk, and we laugh just like anyone else," Zahir informed her tersely. "As far as entertainment, the stories of the shaman are as much as we need. Of course, we don't have to worry about celebrating during the month of fasting, as we know parties like this aren't permissible. The month of fasting is supposed to be a somber time of reflection, not a joyous one."

"I see that you are as severe as your father was." Sighing, Nasira shook her head. "Tell me, Zahir. What is so terrible about happiness that you feel the urge to restrict it so? What is so awful about joy that you can't stand watching people glad?"

"I don't mind seeing people happy," grunted Zahir. "It's just that what causes people joy is often evil. If what brought beings delight wasn't immoral, I wouldn't have a problem with it."

"What's so evil about music and dancing?" Nasira inquired, arching an eyebrow at him, a gesture he could barely make out because of her veil.

"They invite lascivious thoughts and actions," muttered Zahir, his cheeks burning.

"I understand." Nasira nodded. "Something is evil if there is a chance that it might lead someone into sinful conduct. Of course, anything can lead to immoral behavior, so, logically, everything should be forbidden to virtuous Bazhir."

"Just because you don't agree with my beliefs, there's no need for you to mock them." Vexed at having his convictions attacked by a young woman not even of his tribe, Zahir glowered at her. "I'm not preventing you from dancing, so I don't see why you should attempt to force me to dance."

"I can tell that you disapprove of dancing, though," pointed out Nasira. "That interferes with my enjoyment of the evening."

"I can tell that you disapprove of my belief that dancing is sinful, and that interferes with my enjoyment of the evening," Zahir countered.

"Touché." For a moment, Nasira giggled before continuing in a more somber tone, "To be honest, Zahir, I didn't come over here to torment you. I just ended up doing it, because that's what I am best at, but I actually wanted to tell you that my father and your cousin Nadir have been planning my marriage to him."

"You're going to wed Nadir?" echoed Zahir, appalled. "Why would your father pair you with Nadir? You are the daughter of a chief. You should be marrying a chief or a future chief, instead of the disgraced cousin of one. Your looks are good enough that shouldn't be too much of a problem despite your shrewish tendencies."

"Exactly," agreed Nasira grimly. "I fear that my father wishes to gain influence over your tribe through this marriage. At least, you should be aware that my father would rather see Nadir, whose father he was friends with because they studied here together and shared the same progressive views, in a position of authority in your tribe than you with your more conservative values."

His head aching from this latest evidence that his cousin was plotting against him, Zahir demanded, "Why are you telling me this?"

"Perhaps I just want you to know that—whatever you may think of me later—I do wish that things had turned out differently." Suddenly, the serious expression in Nasira's eyes shifted to a simultaneously submissive and encouraging one that was commonly employed by Bazhir women when they were flirting. "Maybe I just want you to realize that I really wouldn't have minded spending my life teasing you."

"Nasira!" shouted Nadir, materializing suddenly from the crowds, and grabbing onto her wrist tightly. "I've been looking all over for you."

"I was just getting a drink." As she established as much, Nasira raised the goblet of sharbat in the hand that Nadir wasn't clutching. "If I knew I required your permission to do so, my dear, I would have asked. After all, I wouldn't wish to cause you any stress or anguish."

"Nasira told me that you two were planning to be wed, Nadir." Abruptly, Zahir inserted himself into the conversation.

"You told him?" The fake grin that Zahir didn't understand how he had ever found earnest or attractive slipped from Nadir's face as his hold on Nasira's slim wrist tautened. Praising the Goddess that Aisha hadn't married this slimeball, Zahir thought that Nasira would have a bruise bracelet on her left wrist tomorrow as a result of Nadir gripping her too tightly.

"I only thought that everyone should know our good news, my love," trilled Nasira, fixing an adoring gaze upon Nadir.

"Indeed." Zahir's jaw twisted. "I'm astonished that you didn't think such important news was worth sharing with your chief, cousin."

"I assure you that no slight was intended, Zahir," Nadir said, his artificial smile firmly entrenched upon his face once more. "It's just that when you are preparing a wedding, there is so much to do that it's easy to forget something."

"I understand perfectly," remarked Zahir, eyeing his kinsman coldly so that Nadir would comprehend just how simply Zahir could see through him. "Just be aware of how easy it is for a man who marries the daughter of a neighboring chief to be accused of betraying his tribe, especially if that man neglects to mention to his chief that he is considering such a match."

"Don't worry; I haven't forgotten how eager you are to see me killed like my father." Shooting Zahir an icy glare, Nadir tugged on Nasira's arm. "Come along, Nasira. Your father wants to speak to us, and we shouldn't keep him waiting."

"Coming." Turning her head around to address Zahir, she added in an inflection that made it more than a common farewell, "Take care of yourself, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

Watching his cousin drag her away, yanking on her so hard that it really was amazing that her arm wasn't tugged out of its socket, Zahir wanted to return the piece of advice, but she was already too far away to hear him. Then again, she didn't seem to have any power to take care of herself. Her helplessness was clear in the warning that she had provided him. There was no point in wasting his breath providing her with guidance that she couldn't follow.

As a result of Nasira's warning, Zahir decided to increase the degree to which he was monitoring his cousin's conduct. For that reason, the next morning, he headed to his cousin's quarters, but when he knocked on the door, nobody answered. Annoyed, he increased the volume of his knocks to no avail. Scowling when his thirteenth bang on the door failed to summon anyone, he pivoted on his heel and asked a passing maid, "Do you know where Nadir ibn Kamal is?"

Like most maids, the one Zahir had stopped was glad for an excuse to gossip. Putting down a basket of laundry, she informed him, "This morning before dawn he departed with Chief Mahmud and Mahmud's daughter. Rumor has it that he'll be marrying Mahmud's daughter and visiting the tribe for awhile."

"Thank you for your time," answered Zahir automatically, the blood roaring in his ears. How dare Nadir run off on him like this? How could Nadir presume to marry Nasira when Zahir had already made it clear that he disapproved of the match?

Remembering that this was the time he was supposed to report to the king for training on being the next Voice, he hurried down the hallways and stairwells toward the royal quarters, his rage at his sneaky kinsman growing exponentially with every step.

A few minutes later, as the king lectured him on the various written and oral components of the complicated Bazhir law code, all Zahir could think about was whether he had sufficient grounds to execute his cousin for treason now. Unfortunately, he didn't believe that visiting another tribe or even marrying the daughter of another chief without permission was a capital crime…

"Zahir, I would appreciate an answer to the question I've repeated two times now," stated King Jonathan sharply, intruding on his squire's calculations.

"Stupid," mumbled Zahir, who had scant interest in anything that didn't involve prosecuting his cousin.

"That is not the amount of witnesses needed to substantiate a charge of adultery, and, by the way, I would suggest that if a question contains the words 'how many,' somewhere in your response a number should appear." The king's keen eyes cut into him. "Moreover, Squire, adultery is not a stupid matter. It's painful to the victims of it, and a serious enough crime to warrant stoning. After your reaction to the stonings you witnessed recently, I should imagine that at least would mean something to you."

Feeling like the only stoning he ever wished to hear about was Nadir's, Zahir lifted his chin defiantly. "The first Voice's declaration that the gods themselves told him that charges of adultery must be supported by the arbitrary number of at least four eyewitnesses just so he wouldn't have to stone his own beloved wife for adultery is stupid, sire."

"You needn't harbor such a cynical viewpoint when you don't have any proof that the first Voice's wife committed adultery, or the first Voice's proclamation wasn't divinely inspired." His forehead knotting, King Jonathan frowned. "Given that your sister Aisha is named after the first Voice's wife, you might have more respect for her."

"My sister is as beautiful and as spirited as her namesake was reputed to be." Zahir shrugged. "Anyhow, Your Majesty, if we are in the business of whimsically inventing laws, I'd like to devise one that gives me the right to execute my cousin for marrying the daughter of a chief without my consent and visiting with her father for Mithros knows how long to concoct any number of plots again me. If that's not treason, it should be."

"We are in the business of enforcing and sometimes clarifying laws, not inventing them, Zahir." Shaking his head, the king sighed. "We especially aren't in the business of inventing laws for the express purpose of executing those we couldn't find other grounds on which to kill."

"Even if executing them might save the lives of a lot of people?" demanded Zahir, folding his arms across his chest. "Even if you know that they are plotting against you, and that killing them now will save much trouble later?"

"Yes, Squire, even then." Gravely, his knightmaster nodded. "Monarchs and chiefs are bound by the law as much as anybody else. In fact, many laws are in place just to protect people from abuses by authority figures, and the law wouldn't mean anything if the beings in charge were exempt from it."

"I fail to see why I should limit myself to following the letter of the law absolutely when I know that Nadir won't," Zahir countered, glowering.

"You are better than him, Zahir, that's why," King Jonathan replied quietly.

"Now that we've established that my hands are effectively tied behind my back by the law, what should I do, sire?" His scowl deepening because he did know that any number of wrongs didn't equal a right no matter how much he wanted them to, Zahir asked angrily. "Within the confines of the law, of course."

"Wait."

"Wait?" repeated a horrified Zahir, certain that he had misheard.

"Wait." The king's voice was firm but somehow not unsympathetic. "You have some insight into what Nadir is planning, so you will not be caught off guard when he attacks. Now the best thing you can do is wait."

"I don't want to wait, Your Majesty." Zahir's hands balled into fists. "I want to act. I'm a chief; I won't sit around waiting for someone else to make the first move."

"Waiting is never easy," his knightmaster informed him softly. "That's why patience is a virtue."

"I can't believe that you're reciting trite platitudes," muttered Zahir, his jaw clenching. "With your permission, sire, I'd like to return to my tribe. I want to be there when my cousin makes his move."

"That wouldn't be wise decision," King Jonathan answered, gently squeezing his shoulder. "I think that you'd do better to remain here where you can get support if necessary. After all, your brother-in-law will contact you if he needs your aid."

"I'll follow your advice, Your Majesty," agreed Zahir after a moment's pause, biting his lip. "Gods above, I just wish that Nadir would make his move soon, so I could stop worrying about it, and actually do something."


	20. Chapter 20

Blood on Blood

Five days later, Zahir was kneeling on his mat for the dawn prayers he bullied himself into saying now with the argument that if he was already up at daybreak, he might as well hold the morning bustle at bay for a few minutes through prayer and at least provide the illusion that he would make a somewhat competent next Voice. He was trying very hard to focus on the gods, because he didn't want to turn his praying into a charade as he suspected that the gods wouldn't condone such behavior, but he was distracted by the sound of feet running down the corridor outside his bedroom.

It should be illegal to hurry about this early, he grumbled mentally. The sound of feet smacking against stone every couple of seconds was more disturbing than a constant background noise, which would have been easier to train his mind to ignore. The sound of someone running down a hallway was bound to wake people up or interrupt their prayers. The person rushing down the passageway should really have known better.

Scowling as he gave up this particular feeble attempt at strengthening his at best lukewarm relationship with the gods, Zahir wondered if he received any credit just for trying. Before he could arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, the door to his chamber slammed open.

Reflexively, he pivoted, his fingers flying to his sword hilt. When he realized that the panting female figure clad in black from head to toe except for the area around her unusually hectic jet eyes was familiar, his hand slid away from the weapon.

"Laila!" he shouted delightedly, wrapping his arms around her in a crushing embrace. As he did so, he recognized for the first time that his older sister's stomach was rounder than he remembered. Looking up at her, he asked, unable to prevent the amazement from lacing his tone, "You're pregnant?"

"Yes." Some of the panic shining in Laila's gaze was transformed into a weary jubilation. "Hassan wrote to you three months ago with the good news."

"I—I must have forgotten amidst everything else that was going on," stuttered Zahir, his cheeks crimson with embarrassment as he released her.

"Don't worry," she soothed. "I understand."

She must have, Zahir noted inwardly. After all, although she was blameless herself, she seemed to sympathize with the shortcomings of others. While she was infinitely kind herself, she appeared to comprehend why people had to do unspeakably cruel things to each other. Even though following the rules came to her as naturally as breathing, she never judged anyone for breaking them.

That was why he always knew that she could understand him better than he did himself. Both his sisters had a knack at seeing through him as though he were made of glass, but where Aisha challenged him, Laila supported him. When he was little, Aisha was the one who could make him laugh and who could convince him to violate a million rules he never would have dared to otherwise, but Laila was the one who had dried his tears when he was hurt and the one who slipped him treats when his mother would have slapped his hand away from her cooking. If anyone was blessed in their siblings, he was, and, when it came down to it, he needed Laila's support as much as he needed Aisha's prodding. He just didn't tend to notice Laila as much as he did Aisha, because she demanded less attention than Aisha did.

Abruptly recalling how strange it was for Laila to come bursting into his room like this, he gestured at his mat. Already feeling the blood beginning to pound in his veins, he suggested, "Why don't you sit down, Laila? Then you can tell me how you came to be here in such a state."

Obediently, Laila seated herself on the mat alongside him, but when she opened her mouth to speak, all that emerged from her lips was a series of hacking coughs that shook her whole frame.

"I'm a terrible host." Furious with himself for not offering his flushed, panting sister a drink earlier, Zahir snatched the cup of water he kept beside him while he slept and thrust it into her hands. "Here. Drink. Sorry if it's a bit musty."

Accepting the glass, Laila raised it to her lips. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was her quaffing the water down. When she had emptied the cup, she set it down again, remarking, "Sorry about gulping it all down like that. I've just been riding for a day now."

"I didn't know you had that sort of strength," muttered Zahir, gawking at her.

"Just because someone doesn't spend their entire lives showing off how strong they are, that doesn't mean that they are weak," replied Laila, smiling gently. "Most women are stronger than you could possibly imagine when their family is threatened."

"Speaking of threatening families, you shouldn't have exerted yourself so much by riding here at such a speed." Reprovingly, Zahir shook his head. "You could have killed or harmed your baby."

"Nonsense," Laila answered. "Activities like that which make the blood hot are said to increase the likelihood that a woman will bear a son."

"A little nephew would be nice." Tenderly, Zahir rested a palm against the outline of his elder sister's swollen belly, hoping to feel a tiny foot kicking against him. Although he felt nothing, he told himself that the life growing in Laila's womb had been learning to ride as its mother galloped through the desert. After all, the reason Bazhir were such good horsemen had to come from their experiences on horseback even when they were in their mothers' wombs. "After riding with you like this, I'm sure he'll be quite the horsemen."

"Zahir, I risked my baby riding to you like this, because I was the only one who could come to you." Her eyes grim, Laila clasped his hand. "Among the Bazhir, there are two types of women who are inviolate: pregnant ones and recent widows."

Gritting his teeth, because if there was trouble in his tribe it could only come from one source, Zahir demanded, "What did Nadir do now?"

"Three mornings ago, he rode into our camp at the head of two dozen of Chief Mahmud's, whose daughter Nadir has married, tribesmen. Hassan rallied our men to fight them, but they outnumbered our men two to one, and, besides, our men had to protect our tents, our women, and our children. In the end, Hassan thought it would be wise to surrender before too many of our lives were lost," Laila explained, tears sparkling in her eyes and her lower lip quivering. "Our men have been tied up for now so they can't cause trouble, but our women and children have been allowed to complete our chores and visit our men without too much interference. After all, if Nadir hopes to be our chief, he can't rely on his father-in-law's men to support him forever, since Mahmud will want them back, and that means that Nadir can't alienate us entirely. When I came by yesterday morning to give my husband breakfast, he told me to ride out into the desert under the guise of collecting rare herbs to dull my pregnancy pains and morning sickness and to get to Persopolis to inform you of what happened. He said to tell you that he can have the women and children slip their men weapons, and that if you come riding into the camp tomorrow morning, he and the other men will be ready to revolt. The surprise attack should be all that is required to defeat Nadir's men."

"This is all my fault," admitted Zahir, yanking his hand out of his sister's grasp and pounding his fist against his forehead in frustration. Gods above, he wished that he had been present when Nadir had assaulted his tribe. Although he logically understood that he could have done no more to protect his people than Hassan had and that if he had been there, he would have been imprisoned like Hassan and the other men had, he still felt like a good leader would have been there. Of course, if he could have seen a way to rescue them, he would have felt less guilty about not partaking of an equal amount of their suffering. However, he was so incompetent that he couldn't even do that. "I should have been there."

"Don't beat yourself up," Laila murmured, firmly tugging his fist away from his forehead so he couldn't bash himself again. "If you had been there, you just would have been imprisoned with the other men, and you wouldn't be able to help us."

"I won't be able to, anyway," mumbled Zahir, shaking his head miserably. "I'm useless. Even with me, you'll still be outnumbered."

"You are no such thing," chided Laila softly, stroking Zahir's hair with her fingers. "You'll find a solution like you always do. All you need to do is have as much faith in yourself as I do in you."

"You've always believed in me," Zahir answered, biting his lip. "It might have appeared to go unnoticed and unappreciated, but it hasn't, Laila."

"I don't do good deeds for medals, Zahir, because if I did they would no longer truly be good deeds if they were all about boosting my own ego," responded Laila, giving him a ghost of a grin. Somehow, he knew she wasn't lying. Unlike Aisha, who had a talent for being in the limelight, Laila was content to let others shine. On the surface, this might make her seem insecure, but he saw now that her modesty was a result of her confidence, since only the most self-assured beings could bear to humble themselves. All his life, he had regarded her tenderness as a weakness, but now he realized that it took strength to support others. In a way, he thought suddenly, women like Aisha insulted their own gender by acting as though they could only be strong if they assumed the roles traditionally filled by men. "To me, it's enough that my family, my friends, the gods, and I know what I have done, even if that knowledge doesn't take a verbal form. If it takes an unspoken mental or emotional form, that is more than enough for me."

Unable to refrain from staring at her as though he had never seen a woman before, Zahir noticed for the first time that her goodness radiated from her, melting her plainness into something beautiful. Wondering how he could have gazed upon her his whole life without truly glimpsing her loveliness, he whispered, "You're beautiful, Laila, and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. On the inside, you are beautiful, and that makes you pretty on the outside, too. The inner beauty that makes you glow is the only type that matters and the only sort that endures."

"Physical beauty never mattered to me as much as it did to others," said Laila, shrugging her shoulders. "Perhaps that's what prevented me from becoming bitter with jealousy as most females do when they have a sister more attractive than them. When Aisha was born and even then it was clear that she would be prettier than me, I was glad that she was beautiful and I prayed that it would bring her more delight than my plainness brought me. As she grew and it became obvious that she felt trapped in the tribe, I knew that her beauty couldn't bring her happiness, and I began praying that she would find happiness despite her beauty just as I hoped to find joy despite my plainness. Then, when Nadir began forcing her into a marriage with him, I actually prayed that she would become plain, so that maybe he would no longer be interested in her."

Her dark eyes lancing into her brother, Laila continued, "No matter what anyone claims on the contrary, beauty doesn't bring happiness, Zahir. Nadir's current wife, Nasira, is a gorgeous woman, but that doesn't prevent her husband from blacking her eyes and beating her so much that she winces every time that she moves."

"Thank the Goddess that Aisha didn't marry that scumbag," spat Zahir, thinking this was another reason for him to find a way to defeat his treacherous cousin. Even though he was no longer interested in Nasira in a romantic sense as he had once been, he still felt an overwhelming desire to shield her from injury. After all, he owed her a rescue after she had reached out to warn him about what Nadir and her father were plotting.

"Indeed," Laila agreed, her voice somber. "Beautiful women like Aisha and Nasira are likely to be lusted after and they will never know for sure if their husband loves them for who they are or merely because they have a lovely face. On the other hand, plain women like me may not receive a lot of attention, but the love we get is genuine. The men we marry are those like my husband, who are capable of loving more than just a pretty face. That's why I can only pray that wherever Aisha is now, she has finally found happiness and her dreams have been fulfilled in a way that they couldn't be among our tribe."

"Aisha didn't die in the desert," Zahir burst out, unable to keep this information a secret when tears were starting to dribble down his older sibling's cheeks, wetting her veil. "She managed to ride up to the Royal Palace and become a Rider, but you can't tell anyone else in the tribe that."

"I won't." Tears of relief and happiness mingled with the mournful ones streaming down Laila's face now. "It's enough that I know the truth without jeopardizing her safety and her dreams. Just when you see her again, tell her that I love her and that she is in my prayers."

"I will," promised Zahir.

"Good." Her manner suddenly brisk, Laila rose from his mat. "I'll be riding back to my husband to assure him that I reached you with the news, and you should focus on getting men to help defeat Nadir's supporters."

Deciding that there was no way to convince her not to charge through the desert again while she was pregnant when she was the only one who could do it, Zahir ordered, "Wait."

When she complied, halting on her path to the door, he took off a canteen of water that was affixed to his belt and withdrew a bag of dried fruits mixed with nuts from his breeches' pocket. Then, proffering both the canteen and bag to her, he said, "Take these. Try to conserve the water, since oasises are rare, and, anyway, you don't want to waste time stopping if you can avoid it."

"I'll obey you," Laila assured him, leaning forward to brush her lips against his forehead. "Mithros bless you, brother. I have faith in you."

"And I in you." As he swallowed down the lump that had wedged itself in his throat, making it difficult for him to breathe, Zahir was hit by an abrupt surge of inspiration. Swiftly, his fingers fell to his dagger, which he yanked out and dropped onto his sister's palm. "Take this, too, Laila. Pregnant women may be inviolate, but you shouldn't take any chances."

"I don't know how to fight," stammered Laila, gazing dumbly down at the blade her brother had placed in her hand.

"If you need to, you'll figure it out," he told her, hoping that she wouldn't have to. "Just slice at the neck and heart of your opponent. If you can't get a clear shot at either of those, aim for the stomach. If that fails, as well, go for the legs and the arms."

"I understand." Seriously, Laila nodded, as she tucked the knife into her clothing. Then, with a final farewell, she slipped out of his room. He could hear her running down the hallway. After a moment, even the sounds of her fading footfalls disappeared, so that he was alone with his hammering heart and sinking stomach.

With her, the problem of rescuing his tribe hadn't seemed impossible. By himself, though, it felt insurmountable. Angrily, he asked himself which state was the illusion, and, when he could arrive at no answer to this question, he cursed.

Enraged that he was trapped by his own indecision when his people needed him, Zahir threw his pillow at the wall. When it failed to emit a satisfying thud, he growled, "I should never have let the king convince me to stay here. No matter what he said, I should have gone to my tribe."

There was no point in blaming himself or his knightmaster for a crisis that had already happened when there was damage to repair. He would have to center his attention on what he could do now, not what he had failed to do in the past.

Taking deep breaths and steadying his heartbeat with a powerful exercise of willpower, Zahir closed his eyes. He would have to go speak with King Jonathan. That was obvious. After all, he couldn't go off on a quest to save his people without asking his knightmaster's permission first, and the king might have some valuable insight into how to conquer Nadir. At the very least, it was worth a shot, especially since Zahir couldn't devise any other solution at the moment.

As soon as he had made up his mind, he raced out of his room and down the hallway to the royal chambers. He was lucky that it was only a half an hour after dawn, which meant that there were not hundreds of petitioners lining up to pester the monarchs with pleas for justice or mercy. That, in turn, meant that he didn't have to wait long for the guard to usher him into the king's study, where his knightmaster was speaking with Queen Thayet and Lord Raoul.

After offering a cursory bow to the king and queen, Zahir let the story of what had happened to his tribe tumble out of his lips. Even though he realized that it was probably impossible to understand half of what he was saying, he couldn't force himself to slow down. His heart was pounding crazily in his chest, and his words wanted to match the beat his thundering heart set. Finally, when his face was burning from a lack of air, his tale drew to a close, and he was able to breathe properly again.

"Would you and your squad care to take a ride through the desert with me, Raoul?" King Jonathan asked, his blue eyes hard enough to make Zahir very glad that he wasn't Nadir. "The healers say that a little morning exercise does wonders for one's health."

"Of course." Lord Raoul grinned wolfishly. "My boys and I were getting tired of lounging around here."

"You're coming, sire?" demanded Zahir, gaping at the king as he finally processed this revelation.

"Obviously," King Jonathan responded, arching an eyebrow. "You said your tribesmen were outnumbered two to one, didn't you?"

"Yes." Grudgingly, Zahir bobbed his head in confirmation.

"Then you need all the help that you can get," declared his knightmaster crisply. "The whole reason Hassan contacted you was so that you could bring in reinforcements."

"I can handle it, Your Majesty." Zahir's jaw tightened stubbornly, because even if he felt helpless and incompetent, he didn't want anyone else to perceive him that way. "I don't need any help."

"If that's true, then why did you come to me?" King Jonathan's other eyebrow rose.

"I need your permission to ride out to my people," replied Zahir, meeting his knightmaster's gaze resolutely. "That's all I need from you, sire."

"I won't grant my permission for you to ride out to rescue your people by yourself," the king educated him brusquely. "That's a foolish death mission, and I'd rather not risk my squire's life needlessly."

"Your Majesty, you don't need to involve yourself in this," insisted Zahir, his jaw tautening so much it hurt. "As I said, I can handle it."

"Not by yourself," King Jonathan countered, shaking his head. "There's no shame in admitting that you can't solve everything by yourself. Just ask yourself whether your pride is really worth more than the lives of your people." When Zahir hesitated, biting his lip, the king pressed his advantage. "As the Voice, I have an obligation to you and to your tribe. When it comes down to it, I am merely doing my duty, not interfering."

"My husband cannot permit your cousin to overthrow you, because that might give Nadir or some other Bazhir cause to believe that they might be able to rebel against him," put in Queen Thayet. "Besides, Zahir, if you are going to be the next Voice, you have to concern yourself with what the rest of the Bazhir will think when my husband makes it plain that he wishes you to be his successor. In this case, you can't be seen fighting another chief's men without the support of the current Voice."

"Even if that chief has conspired against me, Your Majesty?" scowled Zahir, his eyes narrowing. "Even if that chief's men attacked my people and I was just defending them?"

"Even then," the queen pronounced levelly. "Yet, if my husband made it clear that he sided with you by riding into battle against your cousin and Mahmud's men, no Bazhir would dare to criticize your conduct in this."

"I don't see why I should be influenced by the opinions of Bazhir who are obviously stupid or mentally unstable, Your Majesty," grumbled Zahir, irritated that such a crucial choice had to be impacted by so many individuals he didn't know or particularly care about. As far as he was concerned, the more he learned about leadership, the more migraines he got. At this point, however inglorious it was, he would have been content to be a lowly follower all his life.

Glancing sideways at the king, he added, trying a new line of debate, "My liege, I'm not sure you should be riding into battle at all…"

"I do not fear riding into battle against Nadir's supporters," his knightmaster interrupted firmly. "They are Bazhir, and they would not commit the grave sacrilege of slaying their Voice. In fact, when they see that the Voice has decided against them, they might very well surrender without any of us really having to bloody our weapons, which, of course, would be the most desirable outcome."

"Am I at least allowed to ride out with you and the squad from the Own?" Zahir asked, recognizing that he had been outwitted and wanting to salvage as much as he could from the situation. Of course, he told himself, even if King Jonathan didn't permit him to go, he would sneak out and do his part in saving his tribe. If he couldn't rescue his people by himself, he wouldn't let others do it all for him.

"Of course you are." The king's eyes gleamed at him. "Have you ever heard of a knightmaster who didn't ride with his squire into battle?"

"Now that's settled, I'll go gather my boys," announced Lord Raoul, rising and moving toward the door.

"We'll meet in the stables and depart as soon as possible," King Jonathan called after Raoul as he left. Then, turning to Zahir, he said, "Help me get armored, and then prepare yourself."

Obediently, Zahir followed his knightmaster into the king's dressing room. He was silent as he pulled out King Jonathan's armor. As he slid first the shin guards, then the knee joints, then the thigh plates, and then finally the mail shirt and neck flap onto his knightmaster, he didn't speak, either. Finally, when he was fastening the king's helmet to the neck flap and bolting the nasal to the helmet, Zahir remarked awkwardly, "Sire, you know, I think I wanted you to help me handle Nadir's attack, and I figure that's why I came to you in the first place even though I didn't fully realize it at the time."

King Jonathan flipped up his helmet to reply, "I know, Squire, but it's good to know that you recognized that, as well. By the way, you should be aware that there is nothing shameful about asking for assistance when you require it. Leaders should never be afraid to do work themselves, they should never ask anyone to do anything they wouldn't do themselves, and they should do their best to lead by example. However, they cannot know or do everything themselves, and that means that it is wise for them to seek out advice or aid whenever they know that they cannot achieve a given goal alone. That's why a large component of being a leader involves recognizing the strengths of those around you, and placing those beings in a position where those strengths are most effective, while at the same time being aware of the weaknesses of those around you, so that those vulnerabilities can be compensated for. When it comes down to it, good leaders don't need to know everything. They just have to find someone who does know how to solve a particular problem and give that person the support they need to do so."

"You mean, good leaders use people," observed Zahir, frowning.

"If you wish to phrase it so crudely, yes," his knightmaster answered. "Leaders do use people, but good ones, unlike bad ones, do not use others in order to boost their own egos or for their own selfish ends. Good leaders use others for the common welfare and in turn see themselves as a tool to be used for the benefit of their people. In short, good leaders recognize that they should have a mutually beneficial, rather than parasitic, relationship with their subjects."

Zahir didn't have a clue how to respond to this, but, fortunately, he was spared the necessity of doing so when his knightmaster waved a gauntleted hand in dismissal, saying, "Go get ready quickly now. We have your tribe to save."


	21. Chapter 21

Broken Dreams

Zahir should have been tired. After all, he had spent all of yesterday in a flurry. First, Laila had burst into his room during his morning prayers with the news that his cousin had taken over his tribe, and he needed to rescue them. Then had come the ordeal of recounting the whole horrible story to the king, and then the crazed rush of their departure.

After that, there had been only the parched wind smacking against his face, and the rusty gold sand churned up beneath his mare's hooves as he, King Jonathan, Lord Raoul, and the squad from the Own rode across the stark landscape to rescue his people. Soon their shirts were soaked with sweat as the merciless sun seared into their backs, and their mounts were coated with sweat from exertion, but they stopped only once in mid-afternoon at an oasis to water the horses and refill their canteens. The pace was as swift as the progress to the desert itself had been slow.

The sun had set completely, and the constellations were starting to burn in the inky sky when they finally reached the outskirts of Zahir's tribe. Taking advantage of the darkness, they had unrolled their sleep mats and blankets as silently as they could. Not wanting to alert Nadir or the men Mahmud had provided him to their presence, they hadn't lit a fire, and instead had eaten hard bread mixed with dusty water from their canteens for supper before curling up under their blankets on their sleeping mats.

Gazing up at the stars and the moon, Zahir had found that he couldn't sleep. When he looked up at them, he realized just how insignificant a speck he was in the universe. The moon and the stars told him in a manner that was infinitely more cutting than mere words could ever be that he didn't matter, and nothing he did made any difference whatsoever.

All the people that he knew and loved didn't mean anything either, and neither did the beings he deplored. All of them were meaningless to the universe, which had existed long before any of them had been a gleam in their parents' eyes, would continue on indifferent to them as long as their brief lives endured, and would carry on centuries after their children had all perished.

Nothing any of them did could alter the course of history, and all of them were just traveling from blackness to blackness as they moved inexorably from the dark warmth of their mother's womb to the cold, endless black void of the night. Each of their lives was but a flicker in the darkness, and it was only a silly illusion that any of them could ever beat back the blackness.

After all, one of the dark's greatest gifts was the gift of illusion, the ease of gentle dreams in night's embrace, and the beauty that imagination brought to what would repel in the day's harsh light, and the dark's most powerful illusion was the hollow comfort that the dark itself was temporary, and that every night brought a new day, because it was the day that was truly fleeting. Day, not the night, was the illusion. As days were defined by the nights that divided them and as stars were defined by the eternal black though which they wheeled, the dark embraced the light and brought it forth from the center of itself. With each victory of the light, it was the dark that won.

The dark always won because it was everywhere. It was in the wood that burned in a roaring fire, and in the kettle that cooked food over the blazes. It was under his blanket with him, and it was inside him as well as outside of him. He could walk leagues in the desert in the midday sun, and the dark would still be with him, attached to the soles of his feet. He could burn as brightly as he wanted, but the dark would still be triumphant, because it was the strongest light that casted the darkest shadow.

Finally, he drifted into a fitful sleep, even though he wasn't even exhausted. He spent the night screaming soundlessly as first one nightmare than another nightmare jolted through him like lightning in an apocalyptic thunderstorm. First, he dreamed that he slew his cousin, and blood splattered from Nadir's chest onto his sword and the sand, staining everything burgundy and contaminating Zahir's hands forever.

Then, before he could sit bolt upright in horror, he had been dropped into the next nightmare. This time, it was his head that was severed from his neck with a neat slice of his kinsman's sword, and it was Nasira's face that was beaten until it resembled chopped venison, and it was Hassan who was wrapped in chains forever, and it was Laila whose cheeks glittered with salty ribbons of tears.

Feeling moisture pricking at his eyes, Zahir opened his eyelids, and shoved himself upright on his sleeping mat. A hundred howls bounced around inside his mouth, but he refused to move his lips and release them. He wasn't going to admit to being weak enough to be afflicted by nightmares, even if all the shouting in his brain that nobody would ever be permitted to hear was making him feel as though he were already dead. Reminding himself wryly of the ancient superstition that if you dreamed you were dead you would never awaken again in the Mortal Realms, he took in the camp around him.

Although it was before dawn, many of his companions were already rolling up their sleeping mats and sheets, munching on dried fruit and salted meat as they did so. Given the restless night he had, he should have been tired as he rose and dressed, but he wasn't.

He didn't so much as yawn as he rolled up his sleeping mat and blanket, and he supposed it was impossible to be exhausted on the verge of a battle. The adrenaline of an approaching fight had to be enough to make even the blood of a drowsy grandmother rage. Anyone who didn't feel alive when they were about do battle to protect their people had to be dead already.

Even though he really didn't require the energy boost, Zahir popped a few pieces of dried fruit into his mouth and took a bite of the salted meat. Rather, he corrected himself inwardly with a scowl, he took a bite of what purported to be salted meat, but what was more likely leather wrapped snugly in an ocean's worth of salt. Deciding that eating salt would just make him thirsty in the coming fray, Zahir shoved the salted meat in his pocket and hoped he would never be desperate enough to actually want to consume it.

Then, as the men around him finished readying themselves, he tightened his jaw and tapped his fingers impatiently against his sword hilt. Mithros, he hated waiting. Waiting had to be worse than dying. With dying, at least there was certainty, after all. Unfortunately, he was a warrior, because he had been chosen as one before he was even born. That meant that his life would consist of waiting, fighting, killing if he was lucky, and dying if he wasn't. It was a grim destiny, but it had selected him, and there was nothing he could do about it. All he could do was face it with some level of courage.

"You needn't tense up like a mastiff that has scented a hare," remarked the soldier beside him, and Zahir didn't even have to turn to know it was Neal's annoying cousin Dom who had spoken. That merry, smug, matter-of-fact tone that could make even a diplomat want to strangle the speaker had to be genetic. "There probably won't be nearly as much of a fight as you think."

"Are you a pacifist?" Zahir demanded irascibly, hating that Dom sounded so satisfied by the prospect of there not being a battle when the blood was roaring loudly in his veins, straining like a tethered dog to be allowed to hunt, maim, and kill. Gods above, if there was anyone he detested more at the moment than the enemy, it was a blasted pacifist. As far as he was concerned, if pacifists really wanted peace, they should stop making people want to murder them because of their vexing insistence on finding a non-violent solution to every problem. Pacifists really shouldn't be surprised when the lethal fury they strove to curtail was unleashed upon them. Still, it was fortunate that Trevor wasn't here. Somehow, Zahir didn't wish for his friend to witness battle. Anyway, it would be a shame if he were tempted to kill Trevor. "I bet you are. I wager you believe that if we continue to feed steaks to an attacking lion, it will spontaneously transform itself into an herbivore and leave us alone. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the military is the wrong place for pacifists who can't stomach the sight of a little bloodshed."

"I'm not a pacifist, but rather a stereotypical naughty boy from the Own," responded Dom cheerily, chewing on a slice of dried fruit. "Unlike you, I just happen to be aware of what goes on in the real world around me, which means that I recognize that, because the king is here, our valiant adversaries will probably surrender when they discover that important piece of information. After all, any Bazhir who slays their Voice sentences themselves to eternal torture—or is convinced that they do, at any rate, which is equally valuable to us."

"One can always hope," Zahir grunted, not wanting to sound completely bloodthirsty by stating that after months of clandestine warfare with his treacherous cousin he longed for a grand, open final confrontation rather than an anticlimactic one.

"One can always hope for what?" pressed Dom, his brilliant eyes riveting on Zahir, who glowered. "A quick, relatively bloodless victory, or a protracted, bloody struggle?"

"One can always hope that you'll go away, or that failing shut up," snapped Zahir, not about to admit to anyone but himself that an appallingly high percentage of himself wished for the prolonged, bloody struggle Dom had mentioned instead of the swift, relatively bloodless victory.

Before Dom could retort, King Jonathan motioned for them to mount, and their argument was forgotten in the sudden haste to slide onto their horses and charge into the tent village behind the king and Lord Raoul. As Sufia's flying hooves raced him into battle, Zahir supposed that he should have felt nervous, but, as stupid as it might have been, he was no more frightened than he had been before any fight he had engaged in as a page.

In fact, as the wind whipped against his cheeks and his heart pounded, he felt as though he were back in the pages' wing. All fights were really the same, when it came down to it, and only the weapons altered. Every fight was about understanding that your allies and your foes alike demanded every ounce of heart, spirit, sweat, and blood that you could offer. Every fight was about ignoring the butterflies dancing around in your stomach, and learning to love terror and mayhem. Every fight was about knocking heads and talking trash. Every fight was about using all the weapons that you had, even if that meant that you were reduced to slinging nothing but mud and grass. Every fight was about helping your allies when their backs were against the wall and knowing that they would return the favor if necessary. Every fight was not about pretending anything, but about finding the element in yourself that relished violence. Every fight was about surviving and destroying the enemy. He understood that, and so he was well-equipped for any battle.

"You'll show Nadir that nobody challenges us and wins, won't you, girl?" Zahir leaned forward to whisper in his mare's ear. Looking down at her slender, agile body that concealed incredibly powerful muscles, he was happy to be riding into battle with her. She responded rapidly to both verbal and nonverbal commands, she didn't balk easily, and she could knock an enemy unconscious with a well-aimed kick. She was entirely devoted to him, and all he had needed to do to earn that loyalty was feed her, brush her, and murmur compliments into her ear. If only Nadir had been half as steadfast as Sufia…

He didn't have time to contemplate that any further, however, because the guards Nadir had posted had spotted them. An alarm sounded throughout the village, and, reflexively, remembering that squires were supposed to defend their knightmasters, Zahir nudged Sufia closer to King Jonathan. With Lord Raoul on the king's other side, he doubted that his knightmaster needed much more protection, but it was better safe than sorry. Nobody was going to kill the Voice on his watch.

As a contingent of sentinels rode forward to engage them, he found himself grateful that he had spent many of his mornings practicing swordsmanship with the king. Maybe they had never fought together in a battle like this, but they were still attuned to each other and were as familiar with one another's strengths and weaknesses as they were their own.

In fact, Zahir couldn't help wondering if his knightmaster, as Voice, was working some sort of spell upon him. After all, he didn't even feel like they were two separate people anymore. Instead, he felt like they were one entity, and he could understand the king's intentions as well as he could his own. He could merge his style seamlessly with King Jonathan's. He could be the flash, while his knightmaster was the strategist. The king could create openings, and he could exploit them. King Jonathan could maneuver, and he could strike. His knightmaster could be cleverness, and he could be energy.

His blade had chopped off the arm of one enemy and penetrated the intestines of a second when the sound of weapons clashing in a nearby tent announced that his imprisoned tribesmen were free and now confronting their captors.

Leering, Zahir glanced around, trying to discover his cousin, because he wanted to cut off Nadir's sly head. It was his right to kill the traitorous son just as he had slain the disloyal father. It was his duty to protect his tribe by doing away with another insidious threat.

Unfortunately, he couldn't spot his vermin of a kinsman in the fray. Grinding his teeth, he returned his attention to his own skirmish, telling himself that he would destroy Nadir soon and reminding himself that he should find solace in the number of adversaries that were already spread-eagled on the rough, searing sand.

Moans and cries of agony from the fallen pierced the air, ringing in his ears, and he knew that the lucky ones were making those anguished noises as they held in their guts with their fingers and desperately attempted to staunch bleeding from deep wounds. The unfortunate ones were already silent and motionless, never to speak or move again. Soon Nadir would be one of the silent ones, but before he became quiet, Zahir would ensure that he howled loudly enough to rattle the rising sun…

His sword was moving instinctively through a complex volley of assaults, feints, and counters, because thought was too slow on the battlefield and only reflexes honed by training could be trusted, when a mighty voice entered his head.

At first, he tried to block it from his mind, since he couldn't afford to be distracted. However, the voice would not be ignored. It echoed persistently in his eardrums, obstinately and unnaturally increasing in volume rather than fading away.

Somehow, without being told, he comprehended that it belonged to the Voice, and he knew that every Bazhir present could hear it reverberating in their brains. Just like he could, every Bazhir here would feel the presence of the Voice, and every one of them would be reminded of how impossible it was to resist the Voice, who was part of each one of them…

Zahir's fingers loosened around his sword hilt, as the expressions of his foes shifted from stony resolution to shock and finally to gape-jawed horror. The next instant, Mahmud's men had dropped their weapons and knelt defenselessly on the ground. With that, the battle ended as abruptly as it had begun, and the absence of clashing metal resounded in the cavern of Zahir's ears.

"Forgive us," said one of the enemies Zahir had been fighting a moment ago, reaching out tentative hands to touch the king's feet. Keeping his head bowed, the man added, "We didn't know you were here. We would never have fought against you if we had realized who you were."

"You were merely acting under your chief's orders, and so you have committed no crime that you need to be forgiven for," King Jonathan declared, dispensing justice as firmly as ever and lifting the prostrated man to his feet. "Arise all of you. It is Mahmud who is responsible for your presence here, and it is him I will speak to about this. You will heal those of you who cannot safely be moved, and then you will return to your tribe, taking your dead back to their families."

Observing inwardly that while the king might want to speak with Mahmud, he wished to confront his cousin, Zahir, his weapon still drawn, twisted through the soldiers who were now carrying their wounded comrades to the shaman's tent to be tended to, looking for Nadir. When he found his kinsman, at first he had trouble recognizing him, because he was sprawled on the sand in a pose Zahir had never seen him adopt before, his eyes blanker than they had ever been, and his skin paler than it had ever been in life.

His fingers numb, Zahir realized, one thought lumbering in the wake of another as he struggled to make sense of the sight of his dead cousin lying at his feet, that he wouldn't need his sword any longer and tucked it back into its sheath. Simultaneously wanting to stare at the gory body before him and wishing to avert his gaze from something he knew would haunt him for the rest of his existence, Zahir studied the gaping wound in his cousin's chest, and the ocean of blood that surrounded it.

Feeling vomit blaze a path up his throat, he swallowed hard. Mithros, he couldn't believe that he had wished to slay Nadir himself. He truly was a monster. Of course, he noted with a dazed bitterness, it might have been better if he had been the one who had killed Nadir. After all, at least if he had done the dreadful deed himself, he would have borne complete responsibility for it, instead of having permitted someone else to do his dirty work for him…Oh, he thought as tears welled in his eyes and implored for release, but when he had yearned for Nadir's death, he hadn't wished for this...

"Zahir." A hand clenched around his shoulder, and his knightmaster's quiet tone somehow managed to penetrate the clouds of remorse fogging his brain. "You'll have time to grieve later, but now you have to deal with Nasira."

"Deal with Nasira?" repeated Zahir through lips that had turned to stone. "You can deal with her just as you handled the others, sire."

"When she married Nadir, she became a member of your tribe, and so I think it is best if you passed judgment on her," the king informed him gently.

Reluctantly, Zahir turned away from his dead cousin and headed over to where Nasira, garbed in a cobalt outfit with a matching veil which made her appear eerily out of place on a battlefield where the wounded were still being carried away, knelt on the bloody sand beside the dead, awaiting Zahir's judgment.

When he reached her, Zahir discovered that his mouth had gone dry and his tongue refused to move. Of course, his tongue wouldn't have helped him much even if it could function. After all, he didn't have a clue what he was supposed to say to the lovely young woman kneeling before him. Rather disconcerted by the fact that Nasira was prostrating herself before him as Mahmud's soldiers had before the Voice, Zahir swallowed and asked, "You do understand that when you married my cousin, you joined my tribe, and I was made your chief?"

"I do." Nasira's gaze locked on his, and he could see the ocher she had lined her eyes with in a futile attempt to conceal the bruises rimming them. "I turn to you for justice and for mercy."

"Some would accuse you of being an accomplice in Nadir's conspiracy against me." As if he were standing outside his own body, Zahir could hear the confidence rising in his own tone. "Yet, I am aware that if you ever were that, you were never that willingly. I know that you were but a pawn in the ambitious game of chess that your father and my cousin were playing, and I will not blame you for that."

"I did my best to warn you of what Nadir and my cousin were plotting against you," Nasira reminded him, looking at him in a manner that begged him not to forget the scene in the ballroom. "Truthfully, I did all in my power to champion your cause over that of Nadir's and my father's."

"And you suffered enough at your husband's fists for that," commented Zahir. Then, speaking more loudly, he pronounced, "Nobody is guilty of the crimes of others. Since you were only married to my cousin for a few days, you need not remain in my tribe as a widow, but may return to your people. The dowry your father paid Nadir to wed you will be given to you, not to your father, since you are under my authority, not his, now. Once your months of mourning are concluded, you may remarry if you wish, but your dowry should be enough to ensure that you live in comfort if you decide to remain single."

"Thank you for your generosity." Nasira bowed her head. "I am forever in your debt."

His heart breaking at seeing a girl as prideful Nasira reduced to pleading with him for clemency all because her father wanted to rule another tribe through Nadir, he told her in a clipped manner, "If you wish, you can repay some of that by bringing your father a message from me."

"What message?" inquired Nasira, cocking her head.

"Tell him that you are only alive today because I love you more than he does, and because I value your existence more than he does," Zahir spat, whirling away from her, since he couldn't bear to look at a young woman whose father would have been happy to sacrifice her for power. He was furious at her father, but, because her father wasn't around to seethe at, he had to direct his rage at her. "Also tell him that if he dares to send soldiers against me again, I will kill him, not just his men. Perhaps he'll stop throwing the lives of others away when it is his own fat neck on the line."

"I'll bring him your message," agreed Nasira in a whisper, and he could picture, even though he wasn't looking at her, her lower lip trembling beneath her headcovering.

"Good," Zahir tossed over his shoulder, as he walked away from her as quickly as he could without running and appearing a coward.

"You did well," the king murmured, resting a hand on Zahir's arm to stop him from fleeing the scene entirely.

"Thanks, Your Majesty," mumbled Zahir, as his face burned. He had forgotten that his knightmaster was witnessing his whole conversation with Nasira when he was speaking to her, although he supposed that was a positive, because he might not have been able to bully himself into allowing any articulate words to pass from his lips if he had been aware of King Jonathan watching him.

"Some would have ordered her stoned just for the crime of being married to a rebel," his knightmaster went on softly.

"Such people are as ruthless as her father, who risked her life for his own personal gain," scowled Zahir, affronted that the king would imagine that he was capable of such disgusting conduct. Yes, he had killed his uncle in cold blood and he had wished his own cousin dead, but he wasn't without a sense of compassion or justice. He would die before he let an innocent person be stoned on his command. "I don't kill innocent women to get vengeance on dead men. That's one level of depravity I haven't descended to yet, sire."

His eyes narrowing as a nasty idea occurred to him, he demanded, "What would you have done if I had decided that she should be stoned, anyway? Would you just have permitted an innocent woman to be executed?"

"Of course not," King Jonathan replied. "If you had chosen to execute her, I would have used my authority as Voice to overrule you. I may not be around at all times to ensure that my chiefs act fairly, but when I am present, I will do so."

"Then you weren't really going to allow me to determine her fate were you, Your Majesty?" Irritated by this sign that his knightmaster didn't trust him, Zahir deepened his glower.

"I permitted you to think you were, so that I could see you act as though her fate were in your hands," the king responded, his tone and gaze steady. "No matter what you believe on the contrary right now, Squire, I trust you, and I was merely giving you the opportunity to succeed, not to fail, although I made sure I had a safety net in place to catch you and Nasira if you lost your footing."

"In that case, I just met your expectations, sire, so there was no need for you to praise me earlier," pointed out Zahir.

"No, you actually exceeded my expectations, Zahir," his knightmaster corrected him, smiling slightly. "Giving the dowry back to Nasira rather than her father was quite a stroke of brilliance."

"Well, I just figured that Nasira deserved to be paid something for the fiasco of being wed to my cousin, and that if her father wasn't capable of caring for her properly, she ought to be independent. She's a pretty girl, Your Majesty, but it's not like they ran out of brains the day she was born and just provided her with a nice wood carving instead of a brain. At any rate, I reckon that she can't do a worse job looking after her affairs than her father did." Gruffly, Zahir shrugged. "Besides, I wasn't going to give any money to the man who helped cause today's mess, for he might misconstrue it as a reward."

Then, before King Jonathan could offer him any more compliments, which would abash him more than most lectures, he strode purposefully toward the shaman's tent, muttering, "If Your Majesty will excuse me, I should care for the injured." Even if he didn't have the Gift, he could still clean cuts, wrap bandages, and distribute healing potions. As chief, it was his obligation to do all he could to tend to his wounded people.

"If I were you, I would never have let such a lovely lady escape from me," shouted a soldier from the Own who was carrying one of Zahir's tribesmen to the shaman's tent for healing.

"That's precisely why you don't deserve someone like Nasira," Zahir fired back, not even bothering to glance over his shoulder to see who the speaker was. After all, the remark had been both perverted and ironic, which meant it had to come from a certain aggravating relation of Nealan of Queenscove.

"Be nice, Squire." The king rested a quelling hand on his shoulder.

"That was me being nice, Your Majesty," rumbled Zahir, who perceived himself as a model of restraint in this situation because he had not punched Dom in the face or cursed at him. "Next time he opens his big mouth, he should use his brain first. I think he'll find it in his pocket or somewhere else that begins with a 'p.'"

"Zahir, you can't be so easily offended." Sighing, King Jonathan shook his head.

"Nothing Dom says offends me," answered Zahir stubbornly more in the interest of rebelliousness than accuracy. "Sire, I'm only offended by things that make sense, and no words that leave his lips ever make sense."

"Come on now, don't exaggerate." The king's mouth had a wry twist to it, but his words were stern. "Even this time, his comment had an element of truth in it."

"A broken clock is right twice a day, Your Majesty." Wondering why his knightmaster was in the irritating habit of taking everyone's side against him, Zahir wrinkled his nose. "When it happens, it is always a coincidence, and so I'd be a fool to put my faith in the clock."

"Your broken clock analogy isn't important." King Jonathan halted, and Zahir had no choice but to do the same as the man continued, "What's important is that Nasira would make a good wife for you, since if you two were wed, peace could be established between your tribe and Mahmud's."

"I had thought of that, sire." Noncommittally, Zahir shrugged as the two of them resumed their journey toward the shaman's tent.

"And?" King Jonathan prodded, arching an eyebrow.

About to snarl that maybe he didn't want to sleep with anyone who had already been contaminated by his cousin's touch, Zahir thought better of that. Such words would insult Nasira, and, even if he wasn't attracted to her any more, he couldn't bear to do that. Finally, as they neared the shaman's tent, he responded, "Nasira's already done her duty by sacrificing herself to her father's ambition when she wed Nadir. Her next marriage should be for love. She deserves that much consideration at least."

Flushing with guilt as he recalled Nasira's remarks at the banquet before she had been compelled to flee Persopolis with Mahmud and Nadir, Zahir observed inwardly that Nasira quite possibly loved him. Aware that it was cowardly, disingenuous, and selfish to hide behind her feelings when it was his own that prevented a marriage between them, he yanked back the flaps of the shaman's tent.

When he slipped inside, the shade of the tent engulfed him, but it did nothing to cool his temper as he pressed on heatedly, "Anyway, what about me, sire? Did you ever think that maybe I didn't want to marry for duty? Did you ever imagine that perhaps I wished to wed for love? Isn't the fact that I don't love Nasira enough reason for me not to marry her?"

"I don't know." The king's bright eyes cut into him. "Do you think it is, Zahir? Do you feel that your personal happiness matters more than the welfare of your entire tribe?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that." His mind burning too hotly to devise an appropriate argument but not willing to concede the point, that was all he could think to say, adding mentally that he would know the answer when he laid eyes on Cait again and could discover if she was half as spectacular as he remembered.

Abruptly, the groans of the wounded penetrated his ears, and the nauseating amalgamation of vomit, blood, and other bodily fluids flooded his nostrils. "Right now, I should focus on tending to the injured, Your Majesty," he added.

Then, before his knightmaster could reply, he crossed over to a boy whose slices appeared to be shallow enough to only require bandaging.

"Aasim ibn Faisal," he said, his expression softening as he approached the lad. "You're only seven years old. Aren't you a little young for sustaining injuries in battle?"

"I turned eight last week," Aasim informed him proudly as he grabbed an herbal salve and bandages from a nearby nightstand.

"That still is terribly young for going into battle, Aasim." As he prepared to rub a cloth coated in salve along a giant gash on the boy's arm, Zahir warned, "Brace yourself. This will sting a little."

"I'm not scared. That's what Mother always says when she's going to put salve on a skinned knee, and it never hurts a bit." Despite his brave words, Aasim grimaced when Zahir rubbed the salve across his abrasion. Obviously trying to conceal the pain he was in, Aasim went on, "Speaking of Mother, I had to fight to defend her and my little siblings. The evil men threatened my family, and I wasn't going to let them get away with that. They tied Father up, but they didn't do that to me, because they didn't think I mattered. I proved them wrong, though, when I killed one of them, something I'm never going to be sorry about, because anyone who hurts my family deserves to die. Father told me not to get involved, but I was already involved the instant the evil men showed up here."

"Your father will thrash you for defying him and risking your life," commented Zahir, not oblivious to the quirk of fate that had him applying salve to the cut of a boy who was soon to be beaten.

"Only if I'm too stupid to convince him that I have learned my lesson from my injury, and I shall never disobey him like that again." Aasim shrugged, while Zahir started to wrap a bandage around the gash on his arm. "I'm clever enough to do that, though, and I'm not scared. Father's a great warrior, and I'm going to be just like him. He wants me to be just like him, you know."

"You are a valiant little warrior." Zahir couldn't stop himself from grinning at the vivacious boy. "When you were born, your parents were wise to name you 'protector.'"

"Names make us who we are." Somberly, the boy nodded.

"We have to live up to our names," murmured Zahir, thinking of his dead cousin. "Nadir means the lowest point or nothing."

"Only in Common," Aasim pointed out, while Zahir finished tying the bandage around his cut. "In our ancient language, it means 'rare and dear,' which fits since his mother died giving birth to him."

"Indeed," agreed Zahir absently. In a daze, he rose from Aasim's sleep mat and moved on to clean and bandage the wounds of a tribesman spread out on a sleeping mat to Aasim's left.

After that, he rubbed salve on the injuries of so many of his people and wrapped bandages around their wounds that their faces started to blur in his mind. Soon, he felt like he were trapped in some terrible broken dream where all he could do was go from one bloody abrasion to the next with all the possible ways that a human body could survive being mutilated merging into one gory abomination in his mind. It wasn't long before he was convinced that he had spent his whole life in this tent, tending to wounds, and that he would continue to do so until the day he died, not pausing to rest or eat. After all, the number of people he had to care for was endless…

As such, when he looked about him and realized that there was nobody else who had injuries mild enough for him to tend to, he was bewildered. After all, caring for these wounded people was supposed to be an endless task, and by definition, there could be no end to something that was eternal. Then, after glancing around him to ascertain that there really was nothing more he could do in the shaman's tent, he remembered with a jolt of shock the cousin's treachery that had resulted in him being in this tent….

Filled with a desire to lay eyes on the corpse of the kinsman that had brought him and so many others into the shaman's tent, Zahir ripped open the tent flaps. As he stepped outside, he saw that the sun was setting, treating the world to a final glorious display of pastel colors before it allowed its now weakly burning light to be devoured completely by the maw of night.

The proof of how many hours had passed since he entered the shaman's tent didn't cause his stomach to growl with hunger or his mouth to water with thirst. Instead, it heightened his compulsion to look at his cousin's body, and, his jaw clenching resolutely, he marched over to where he had last seen Nadir's corpse.

It didn't surprise him that, while the other bodies had been gathered up to return to their families for cremation, Nadir had been left to rot where he was. After all, both of Nadir's parents were dead, and he had no siblings to care what happened to him, either. Zahir's tribesmen were bitter about Nadir's attempt to rule them, and Mahmud's men were indifferent to him.

"At least you don't need a proper ritual cleaning, do you?" His lower lip quivering, Zahir reached out to clasp his cousin's cold, lifeless hand more tenderly than he ever had in the past. "You died in battle, which means that you've got to appear before the Black God with all the blood on you, because the blood you shed fighting is all the purification you need. It's good that you don't need a ritual cleaning, since I'd probably botch that, and I'd probably be the only one around to do it for you. I'll get you cremated, though. Don't you worry about that."

Gazing into Nadir's face, which was softer than it had been since childhood, as death robbed him of the hardness that he had been taught from birth to have, Zahir found that he couldn't feel foolish for talking to a dead person as though the corpse could hear and comprehend him.

"Good game, cousin," he continued, swallowing the mountain that had abruptly formed in his throat. "Nobody could say that you didn't put everything you had into it, and there were plenty of times when you almost outsmarted me. Truly, you were a wonderful match. Even if you lost in the end, the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing. I was just the lucky one, and you were the loser. That's how destiny decided it would be, but it could have gone either way."

As he stared into Nadir's face, Zahir was struck by how similar the two of them really were. Both of them had the same confident dark eyes, the same strong nose, the same stubborn chin, and the same smooth black hair and matching skin. When they stood next to each other, they would have been not even an inch different in height, and they both were slight, having to rely on footwork rather than brute force in a fight. Numbly, he thought that both of them were what people described as handsome. Really, when it came down to it, there were so few physical differences between them that they could have been mistaken for brothers.

Oh, but they hadn't been brothers. Ever since he was born, Nadir had been raised to hate Zahir's father, just as Zahir had been brought up to hate his uncle Kamal. When he was little, Nadir had probably been told stories of the injustices that Zahir's father had committed against Kamal, just as Zahir had tales of Kamal's villainy pounded into his head when he was a child.

Resentment had been bred into both of their bones, and it had stunted both of their growths. The same poisonous feud that had killed Alhaz and Kamal had murdered Nadir, as well, because neither Nadir or Zahir had thought to really question what their fathers had taught them. Both of them had been convinced on their fathers' words that they deserved to be chief. Both of them had been so absorbed with following in their fathers' shoes that neither of them had considered that they might just be standing in their fathers' shadows. Both of them just didn't want to disappoint their fathers. Both of them were nothing more than prideful fools.

Zahir had only been lucky enough to be born the son of the chief, instead of the son of the challenger, but that was only an accident of birth, and, when he looked at it in that light, he couldn't begrudge his cousin for fighting against that.

After all, in Nadir's position, he would have done the same thing, because he and Nadir really were no different. They were just two fatherless boys who had dedicated their lives to avenging the murders of their fathers and to fulfilling their fathers' legacies. They were just two teenagers who wanted vengeance and to make their fathers proud of them at whatever cost to their souls. They were not evil so much as they were haunted by fathers that wouldn't die in their memories, and they might have been bent on one another's destruction, but that wasn't something they had chosen for themselves. Indeed, they would probably have been allies if their fathers hadn't taught them to be enemies, because that was how much power fathers had to ruin lives.

"There you are." A palm rested on Zahir's shoulder, breaking him out of his maudlin musings, and he looked up to see his knightmaster standing behind him. "I've been searching all over for you."

"Now you've found me, sire," Zahir ground out, swiping away the tears that had fallen unbidden down his cheeks when he had been studying his cousin's body, because he didn't want the king to spot his weakness. "Will you please leave me alone now? I've done my duty by passing judgment on Nasira and tending to the wounded. Can't I be allowed some privacy to mourn my cousin at last?"

"You know that you would have been forced to kill Nadir for treason if he hadn't been slain in battle," stated King Jonathan gently. "In a way, it was a mercy that you didn't have to do the deed yourself."

"Dead is dead, and I killed him indirectly even if I didn't so directly." Miserably, Zahir shrugged. "Maybe I would even feel less horrible if I had actually killed him myself. At any rate, I couldn't possibly feel any worse than I do now."

"People who would overthrow you cannot be permitted to live, Squire." The king's hand tightened on his shoulder.

Refusing to be comforted, Zahir demanded, "Why? What makes me so fit to be chief anyway? Is it the fact that my father was one, and his father before him, and his father before him back until even the village story teller doesn't remember a time when my family wasn't in charge of this tribe? That's ridiculous. Just because your father was a good ruler, that doesn't mean you'll make a skilled leader. Just as there are some people whose fathers were carpenters who couldn't hammer in a nail if their lives depended on it, history is filled with absolutely insane kings who got the throne just because it had belonged to their fathers. The present king of Maren is proof positive of that."

"Most people whose fathers are carpenters learn woodwork, and most people whose fathers are leaders learn how to rule," King Jonathan reminded him.

"If it's learned, it's not some divine right," argued Zahir. "If it's not some divine right, how can I blame my cousin for challenging it when I would have done the same in his position?"

"That's a dangerous line of questioning, Zahir. People have lost their heads over less seditious notions than that," his knightmaster educated him sharply. "Besides, when governments are overthrown, periods of dreadful violence follow, and those times of tumult generally end with a regime even more oppressive than the previous one. If you want to change government effectively, you have to change the law through legal means, and, if you want to grant more power to the masses, you have to educate them if you hope to avoid chaos. That's one of the reasons my wife have founded so many schools."

"Just because what I said is dangerous doesn't mean it's wrong," countered Zahir mutinously.

"Squire, you are fortunate that I will put your insolence down to grief," King Jonathan remarked curtly.

Zahir opened his mouth to assert that the king could put his insolence down to common sense instead when he suddenly forgot what he had intended to say, and, after a second of struggling to remember what he had intended to announce, he shut his mouth again. Tendrils of luminescence were weaving their way gingerly into his mind, stroking away the knots of rage and grief, and leaving behind soft waves of serenity.

For a moment, Zahir allowed his brain to be massaged. Then, it occurred to him to question what was happening. As soon as he did so, a dreadful suspicion filled him. Furious at this latest betrayal, he shoved the strands out of his mind with a prodigious effort. As he pushed the threads of magic out of his brain, he pulled free of his knightmaster's grip on his shoulder, snapping, "Don't touch me."

"Zahir—" The king began, but Zahir couldn't bear to hear him complete the sentence.

"I trusted you," he hissed in a strangled voice. "You took advantage of that to just slip into my brain and manipulate my feelings. My head is the only place that's truly my own, but I guess one of the problems with you being the king and the Voice is that you don't think the privacy of the people beneath you matters very much. You think you have a right to know exactly what your subjects are thinking and feeling when you don't, and you certainly don't have the right to control what goes on in people's heads, but I suppose if you can't use your charisma to manipulate people, you'll employ magic to do it."

"You said that you trusted me," answered King Jonathan, reaching out to rest his hands on Zahir's shoulders, but seeming to realize that his squire would just twist away, and lowering his arms to his sides again. "Then you should accept that I had your best interests at heart when I tried to lessen your grief. The last time your emotions got the better of you like this, you almost killed yourself, and I'd rather that didn't happen again."

"You didn't have the right to just decide what was in my best interests." Still outraged, Zahir emitted a derisive snort. "I'd rather not pretend that my cousin's death didn't occur, and I'd rather be depressed than happy because of some sick magic you worked on my mind, thanks for asking. Oh, wait, you didn't ask, and that's the problem. Working magic on someone without their consent is a crime, after all."

"The law allows parents to have healing magic—a rather broad category of spells—to be worked on their children without the children's permission, and, in this instance, the law permits knightmasters to stand in the place of parents." The king dismissed his objection brusquely, and Zahir could have kicked himself for bringing up legalities to someone who spent his life worrying about the intricacies of government. "Whether you want to accept it or not, Squire, I have legitimate authority over you. Just because you do not approve of how I wield that authority doesn't mean that I have abused it."

"Of course, it's all about authority." Zahir nearly choked on his bitterness. "It's all about control, isn't it? It's all about convincing yourself that you know what's best for somebody else, and so it's perfectly fine to deny that individual the opportunity to choose for himself. Well, I've seen that sort of authority used by fathers all my life. I know it's that kind of control that's going to leave Aasim with a massive scar down his arm, because he's never been allowed by his father to even think about becoming anything other than a brave little warrior, and now, even though he just turned eight, that's all he wants to be. I know that's the sort of authority that made Nadir sacrifice everything in a failed attempt to be chief, because the only dreams he was permitted to have were those of his father. I know it's that kind of authority that pushed Nasira into an abusive marriage. I know that's the sort of control that still binds me to my father in more ways than I can bear to think about. That's the kind of authority that both nourishes and destroys everything it touches, and I'll never let myself fall victim to it again."

"Authority properly used only nourishes and doesn't destroy. Zahir, my goal is to teach you, not to control you." For a minute, his knightmaster hesitated. "You seem to need and want to be left alone right now, so I'll leave you be."

After that, Zahir heard King Jonathan's shoes crunching in the sand as he departed. Then, he was alone with his guilt and his grief. At least, it was dark enough that he could no longer see Nadir's corpse, for that would probably be too much for him to bear at the moment.

Of course, he didn't want to think too much about the fact that the night had swallowed Nadir's body entirely. After all, that would remind him too much of how the dark always won every battle because the dark was both powerful and patient, seeding cruelty into justice, contempt into compassion, and possessiveness into love.

The dark, he recognized, could afford to be patient, because it was eternal, and it could wait for the slightest drop of rain that would cause those seeds to sprout, for the dark understood that inevitably the rain would come, and the seeds would grow. After all, the dark was the soil in which the seeds were planted, it was the clouds that hovered above them, and it lurked behind the sun that provided the seeds with the light they needed to survive. The dark's patience was everlasting, because, eventually, even stars flickered out.

"You should join Hassan and me for supper, brother," said Laila's quiet voice from beside him, and he started, surprised that he wasn't as alone as he had believed himself to be. Aisha would have teased him for this, but his older sister only went on, "It's cold out here."

"I'm watching the stars," Zahir told her. "I'll come in later."

"You aren't looking at the stars," demurred Laila, laying a comforting hand on his sleeve. "You're staring at the black spaces between the stars, Zahir, and that scares me. It's the stars that are uplifting, and the spaces in between which are depressing."

"It's difficult not to look at the dark spaces in between when the spaces are so much larger," Zahir grunted.

"Oh, but the stars are so shiny that they steal the show for themselves. Beauty trumps size in the eyes of most mortals." Gingerly, Laila's fingers squeezed his. "In the heart of the dark's strength, you see, is its greatest weakness: one lone pinprick of light is enough to hold it at bay, for if there is any light at all, the darkness isn't complete, and so has lost to the light. That's why if you find the world too dark you have to be a candle, brother."

Considering this, Zahir chewed on his lip. Taking advantage of his silence, Laila commented, " We can cremate Nadir together tomorrow. Now, to celebrate our reunion, Zahir, I have made your favorite meal. You don't want it to get cold while we stand out here, do you?"

"Absolutely not," Zahir admitted, as his stomach made its opinion plain with a loud grumble. As he walked hand in hand with his sister back to Hassan's tent, he thought that love was far more than a candle. Love could ignite the stars, and it wouldn't just endure as long as life did; it would renew life. The power of darkness was nothing next to the strength of love.


	22. Chapter 22

Author's Note: In case anyone's interested, the polls are now open at the Ficship Competition forum, so you can drop by and vote for your favorite stories there. Of course, I'd love you forever if you voted for mine, but that's not part of the official announcement per say…Now that my acting like politician wheedling for votes is done, I'll get on with the chapter, which is what you might actually have wanted to read.

Ashes to Ashes

The next morning, Zahir woke up early to the sunlight streaming like admonishing fingers into Hassan's tent. After eating a mostly silent breakfast of toast spread with tahini, he, Laila, and Hassan left the tent to build a funeral pyre for Nadir while Zahir's mother, who was living in Hassan's tent, remained inside, staunchly refusing to attend the cremation of the son of the man who had murdered her husband.

As soon as he stepped outside of the tent alongside his sister and brother-in-law, Zahir was appalled by how quiet the tribe was. Although it was only just after dawn, there should have been women outside, exchanging news of their families and friends as they returned to their tents with water. There should have been men talking outside their tents about the coming day's work as they sharpened their tools. There should have been children giggling and shouting as they played tag and hide-and-seek.

Today, however, the village seemed almost deserted. No children's laughter rang out. The few people that Hassan, Laila, and Zahir passed all walked briskly and offered only brief nods of greeting instead of pausing to have any sort of conversation. Everybody appeared to be on a mission as somber as the one the three of them were upon.

Grimly, Zahir concluded that most women and children would be busy either tending to a wounded family member, or, if they were lucky enough not to have an injured relation, a hurt neighbor. Today was a day for licking wounds. Today was a day for making and applying salves. Today was a day for spooning soup into the mouths of the injured. Today was a day of sorrow, not jubilation. His tribe may have defeated Nadir, but they had done so at a high price, and they were far too weary for rejoicing.

Thanking the Black God that at least none of his people apart from the treasonous Nadir had been killed or seemed likely to perish, Zahir promised that he would visit the tents of the wounded with baskets of fruits, nuts, and breads as soon as he had seen to his cousin's cremation. After all, the women and children of those injured didn't have the time to cook for themselves, and so would need food.

Together, he, Laila, and Hassan gathered pieces of dry, prickly desert shrubbery into a pyre on the periphery of the village. With Hassan's assistance, he carried Nadir over to the pyre and laid the lifeless body upon it. He was about to use the torch Laila had brought out with them to ignite the parched plants and consume his kinsman's empty body when he saw the tall frame of the king approaching them, and he froze mid-gesture, waiting for his knightmaster to arrive.

"Will you say a prayer for him, sire?" Zahir asked the king anxiously as soon as the man joined them. Glancing hesitantly at his knightmaster, he could feel his cheeks burning with flames every bit as hot as the ones that would devour what was left of Nadir in a few moments. Now that he was making a request of King Jonathan, something that would have been awkward enough to do under any circumstances because Zahir didn't make a habit of begging favors, he couldn't help but recall with shame all the horrible accusations he had leveled against his knightmaster the previous evening.

"Of course; that's what I came out here to do, Zahir." The king nodded solemnly before making the sign against evil with Zahir, Hassan, and Laila following him less than a second behind. Once they all had their hands folded and their heads bowed, he went on, "Trusting in the mercy of the Black God, we send the body of Nadir ibn Kamal to join his spirit in the afterlife, even as we mourn the loss of his life and all the potential it embodied. We pray that the Black God will grant him clemency for all his sins, just as we hope that the Black God will pardon us when we stand before him in his court, because none of us are deserving of salvation, and all of us can only pray for the Black God's mercy."

The part of Zahir that wanted to appease the Black God on his cousin's behalf wished that the Voice had offered a longer prayer for Nadir's soul. Of course, remembering King Jonathan's inclination to offer shorter prayers whenever he had come to address the pages at supper, he supposed that he shouldn't have been surprised.

Besides, it wasn't as though anything important, as far as he could discern, had been omitted from the prayer. Yes, the prayer was sobering, but it was hard to have a funeral prayer that wasn't, especially when the funeral in question was a traitor's where there was nobody present who could remember any good deed Nadir had done that they could remind the Black God about. At such a funeral, all one could do was ask the Black God to be merciful, not just, because justice would probably mean eternal torment for Nadir.

"So mote it be," he, Hassan, and Laila whispered, making the sign against evil to end the prayer.

Now that the praying was concluded, Zahir picked up the torch that he had rested in the sand when the king arrived and touched it against the pyre. Almost instantaneously, the parched shrubbery the torch made contact with burst into flames. Within seconds, those blazes were licking up to engulf Nadir's clothing. A moment after the fire began swallowing his body, all of Nadir had been surrounded by the inferno.

Watching numbly as the combustion devoured what remained of his cousin, Zahir felt tears stinging at his eyes that he stubbornly attributed to the fire, rather than to grief at seeing another member of his family go up in flames. After all, he reminded himself sternly, it didn't matter what happened to Nadir's body now. It was but an empty shell, for all it had ever been was an earthen vessel for Nadir's soul, which had now departed. Even if Nadir's spirit didn't live on in some other plane of existence, there was no denying that it was gone, and so it only made sense to destroy his body as well. There was no point in having a body without a soul to animate it.

Ashes to ashes, he thought, staring at the orange, yellow, and red flames ravenously eating his kinsman. They said that the first humans came from the earth, and so it only made sense that their bodies were returned to the earth when they dies, since there had to be some cosmic balance.

Somehow, this idea was a faint balm to him. Even if Nadir's soul didn't live on in any sort of afterlife, at least his body never truly perished. After all, the ashes would be scattered over the desert by the wind, and the ashes would fertilize the few, hardy plants that managed to survive in the brutal landscape. Then, the plants would be eaten by a camel, a goat, a horse, or even a person, and the elements of Nadir that had been integrated into the plant would enter the animal or the person. When that person or animal died, the Nadir components would be returned to the earth again, and the never ending cycle would begin again.

Abruptly, Zahir understood in a way that only a Bazhir could that everyone and everything in the desert was one. Everybody was the wise old crone. Everyone was the tired, hunched elderly man. Everybody was the busy mother. Everyone was the stern father. Everybody was the loving wife. Everyone was the devoted husband. Everybody was the flirtatious teenager. Everyone was the impulsive child. Everybody was the crying baby. Everyone was the wild horse. Everybody was the ornery camel. Everyone was the stubborn goat. Everybody was the prickly cactus. It didn't matter which one of these things you were during your lifetime, because either you had been it in the past, or you would be it in the future. Even if you couldn't remember it, it was enough to have experienced it.

While he had been lost in his musings, the pyre had burned itself out, and the wind had already started to scatter Nadir's ashes over the sand. Looking around him, he saw that Hassan and Laila had departed, leaving him alone with his knightmaster.

"How does the Black God decide who is saved and who is damned, anyway, Your Majesty?" he asked, glancing at the king. Now that he knew that Nadir's body survived in an altered form, he wanted to hear that if there really was an afterlife, his soul was in a place of eternal bliss, not endless torment.

"Nobody can answer the question of how exactly we are justified," answered King Jonathan quietly. "Except for the Black God, no one can know who will ultimately be saved or damned, and how such a decision is reached."

"You're the Voice." Dissatisfied with his knightmaster's response, Zahir scowled. "You should know."

"I'm a mortal, and it's not for mortals to know such things." The king shook his head.

"It should be, sire," stated Zahir vehemently. "If the gods place the responsibility of avoiding eternal damnation with us when they could have made us perfect so that wouldn't even be an issue at all, they should tell us how to go about accomplishing such a feat."

"The gods provide us with plenty of hints that we choose to ignore," King Jonathan pointed out dryly. "If the gods offered us a clear answer, do you really think people would obey them?"

"Perhaps not, but at least they would have a better chance of obeying the gods if they wanted to," insisted Zahir. Then, before his knightmaster could reply to this, he pressed, "So what hints have the gods given us, Your Majesty?"

"Well, they seem to have given different hints to various societies," said the king, and Zahir rolled his eyes at this latest evidence that the gods were terrible communicators. "However, the hints that the Bazhir have received indicate that the answer to how humans are justified is by submitting to the will of the gods in one's thoughts, words, and actions."

"That's what I've heard I'll my life, sire," Zahir muttered, exhaling gustily. "I guess I'm destined for damnation, then."

"You needn't be so pessimistic," King Jonathan informed him. "Every time you act righteously, you are submitting to the will of the gods, even if you like to pretend that you aren't, and even if you try to mask what's noblest in you with gruffness. Anyway, you aren't quite as hostile to the gods as you were a few months ago. There's hope for you, Squire, just as there is hope for everyone."

"Even Nadir, Your Majesty?" demanded Zahir, narrowing his eyes.

"Yes, there is even hope for Nadir." Gently, the king squeezed his shoulder. "As I said earlier, all of us require some degree of mercy from the Black God, because on our own merit none of us sinners could hope to earn our own salvation. Salvation is always a gift bestowed upon us, not something that we deserve based on anything that we have done."

"In that case, actions don't make a difference, sire, if nothing we do can cause our salvation," Zahir concluded. "Also, if salvation is a gift, I don't see why the supposedly loving gods don't bestow it on everybody."

"Salvation is a gift extended to everybody, but not everyone will take it," his knightmaster corrected him. "Some Bazhir scholars believe that every human will be held accountable at their judgment for every action that they commit, since the gods have granted us free will. On the other hand, some Bazhir scholars have argued that as the gods are omniscient and omnipotent, the gods must have predestined certain individuals to behave in a given fashion in specific situations. However, even the Bazhir scholars in favor of this type of predestination have said that there are certain decisions in everyone's life that individual is free to make a choice upon, and that on such decisions judgment will be passed. Therefore, I can safely say that while, by themselves, actions aren't sufficient for salvation, they can certainly be enough to cause damnation."

"Are Nadir's actions enough to damn him, Your Majesty?" Biting his lip, Zahir returned to the crux of the issue.

"Only the Black God knows the answer to that question," murmured King Jonathan, squeezing his shoulder again. "Since you were able to feel some measure of sympathy and understanding for your cousin, you can definitely hope that the Black God will show mercy upon Nadir at his judgment."

"Sometimes hope is all we have, sire," Zahir whispered, watching as the wind sprinkled Nadir's ashes across the sand. "I guess I should be grateful that he was slain in battle, so I didn't have to order him stoned for treason. As horrible as it sounds, I was lucky that my cousin was killed in battle."

"Actually, it wasn't luck," his knightmaster educated him softly. "I waited until I saw he was killed to open my mind to the enemy Bazhir and inform them of who exactly I was. I didn't wish to end the fight until I knew that Nadir had been slain, because I wasn't sure whether you were ready to order your own cousin to be stoned, and, after organizing an uprising against you, Nadir had to be killed, or else your tribe would never know peace."

"You did something like that just for me, Your Majesty?" Zahir gaped at the king, wondering if the man would ever cease to astonish him. Truly, it was astounding how his knightmaster constantly acted in ways he would never have envisioned, and how many different reasons King Jonathan had for doing everything. In fact, he couldn't help but contemplating why his knightmaster even required advisors when the man seemed perfectly capable of comprehending the manifold ramifications of every decision.

"I did it for you, but not just for you," replied King Jonathan, his tone hushed. "As much as I care about you, Zahir, I could never allow a battle in which my subjects were being killed to continue just for your sake. I was also acting for the good of your tribe, which wouldn't know peace until Nadir was disposed of, and, in this instance, the welfare of all your people was worth more than the lives of a few of Mahmud's men."

Realizing how heavily the deaths of these Bazhir men must weigh upon his knightmaster, Zahir burst out, "Sire, I'm sorry about shouting at you last night. It's obvious that you are looking after my best interests in ways that I can't even imagine."

"Consider it forgiven already, Squire." A trace of bitterness entered the king's tone as he added, "After all, what happened to some of Mahmud's men could be perceived as supporting your grievance."

"Your Majesty, I think that we all have to do things that we don't like sometimes," stammered Zahir, tentative about comforting his knightmaster, but desperately wanting to be of some consolation. "Just because we are forced to do bad things sometimes, I don't suppose that makes us evil or cruel. I think we only become cruel or evil when we derive pleasure out of doing bad things. As long as we feel reluctance or remorse, we're still good."

"No doubt you're right, Zahir." Some of the knot in King Jonathan's forehead untied.

For a moment, Zahir felt a surge of pride. Then, he noticed the sun's position in the sky, and gasped, "Blast my awful memory! I wanted to be making food baskets for the families of the wounded by now."

"In that case, you'd best run along, then, Squire." The king chuckled, and the knot in his forehead disappeared entirely.

However, Zahir didn't waste the energy to feel any satisfaction over this achievement. Instead, he devoted all of his attention to hurrying back to Hassan's tent, where he discovered Laila and Hassan kneeling on the floor, making baskets of food for the families of the injured, while Zahir's mother busied herself with preparing their lunch.

"No, no, my dear," Laila scolded Hassan mildly, rearranging the fruit in the basket her spouse was preparing, as Zahir entered the tent and crossed over to them. "You can't put the pomegranates and the dates next to each other, because their colors clash. You have to put the loaf of bread or the nuts between them, instead."

"My love, the family will be eating the food, not painting a picture of it," Hassan remarked, grinning. "The colors do not need to be coordinated perfectly."

"Attractive presentation of food increases appetite, my dear." Her eyes shining, Laila laughed as made this comment.

Seeing that Laila and Hassan had the preparation of the baskets under control, Zahir scooped up several of the finished baskets, announcing, "While you two lovebirds make the baskets, I'll deliver them."


	23. Chapter 23

Fire and Ice

Three days later, after Nasira and Mahmud's men had departed, when some of the wounded were moving around again, and when the king was satisfied that Hassan was once again firmly entrenched in his position as Zahir's representative, King Jonathan, Lord Raoul, the squad from the Own, and Zahir rode back to Persopolis. Since they were not in as great a hurry to return to the city as they had been to reach Zahir's tribe, they had their steeds travel at a more moderate pace and stopped to water their mounts at more frequent intervals.

When they camped for the evening, Zahir, fulfilling his duties as a squire, took his knightmaster's stallion, Ripple, and Sufia down to the water. After the horses had gulped down enough water to quench their thirst, he devoted himself to cleaning the sweat off first Ripple and then his own mare.

As the brush stroked through Ripple's coat, Zahir found his mind drifting as it often did when his muscles were engaged in repetitive motions. For the first time since Nadir had been slain, he found himself contemplating Mahmud.

Lava blazed through his veins as he thought about the man who had caused so much carnage. He could feel his fingers tremble with wrath as he recalled how Mahmud had provided Nadir with the means for rebellion. Mahmud was to blame for the violence Nasira had suffered at Nadir's fists, and he was responsible for all the injuries Zahir's tribesmen had sustained combating the soldiers Mahmud had dispatched because the villainous chief was too craven to involve himself in the fray.

His hands clenching so tightly around the brush that his knuckles bore an uncanny resemblance to chunks of ivory as he started to tend to Sufia, Zahir vowed to himself that he would destroy Mahmud. The penalty for attempting to ruin him was total annihilation.

Every drop of blood that had spilled from his people would be taken from Mahmud's own body. Each scar that Zahir's people had received would be given to Mahmud. Every blow that Nasira had endured would be directed against the father who had failed in his obligation to protect her.

Mahmud would die, yes, and Zahir himself would do it, so that he could be certain that the man's demise was agonizing and slow as recompense for his crimes. That was desert justice. If Nadir hadn't warranted mercy in his lifetime according to the Voice, then neither did Mahmud…

His mind still racing though the multitude of tortures he wanted to subject Mahmud to and his heart pounding with his excitement as he imagined Mahmud's pleas for mercy—which he wouldn't grant, because Mahmud had shown no mercy to Nasira or to Zahir's tribe—Zahir returned to the camp. As he handed his knightmaster Ripple's reins, he asked, "Sire, you told Mahmud's men that you would be speaking with him about what happened, didn't you?"

"Yes," King Jonathan answered, his expression hardening. "Tomorrow evening, after we have returned to Persopolis, my wife and I will be having a very important conference with Mahmud. By the way, I would like for you to attend the meeting, as well, since the discussion pertains to both your tribe and Mahmud's."

"Does Mahmud know about this meeting that you're planning, Your Majesty?" questioned Zahir, wondering when and how his knightmaster could have relayed this message to Mahmud.

"Of course," the king replied crisply. "I've already sent the sergeant you despise so much and one of his corporals to Mahmud to command his presence at the conference."

"What if he doesn't wish to attend, sire?" Zahir pressed, anxious that he wouldn't have his opportunity for revenge if Mahmud didn't come to Persopolis. As far as he was concerned, it was a legitimate concern, because, as far as he could discern, nobody would be delighted about the prospect of approaching a displeased ruler, and Mahmud was undeniably a coward.

"He received a command, not a request, from me, Squire," his knightmaster emphasized, his eyes as cold as icicles. "Although I doubt that he wants to speak with me when I am furious at him, what he wishes in this instance is absolutely irrelevant. If he has any sense whatsoever, he will not dare to refuse me when my patience with him has nearly been exhausted."

"What if he does dare to disobey you, Your Majesty?" demanded Zahir, his forehead furrowing.

"Then he will be left without a leg to stand on," declared King Jonathan coldly. "I have already proven that his men will not fight me once they know my identity."

"And he could never fight himself, sire," sneered Zahir. "After all, he is always the first one to cower under a table when the alarm bells ring out a warning of attack, and, given his tremendous girth, he is usually the only one who fits. He relies on his soldiers to win all his battles for him. Certainly he would never have the courage to stand up to you himself. Anyway, when he shows up at the conference, may I cut him to slivers with my sword?"

"No, Zahir," the king educated him firmly. "We are discussing a meeting, not a duel, to properly sanction Mahmud."

"If you ask me, Your Majesty, a duel-to-the-death would be a far quicker method of punishing him," muttered a scowling Zahir.

"Unless, of course, Mahmud defeated you," his knightmaster pointed out dryly.

"Mahmud beat me?" scoffed Zahir. "Sire, that's something that would happen once in a century at best. The man is overweight, all fat and no muscle, and so unfit that he breathes heavily if he has to so much as walk briskly. Honestly, the only advantage he could possibly have over me is that all of his blubber would serve as a shield."

"That's quite beside the point," King Jonathan pronounced, gazing sternly at Zahir. "The meeting with Mahmud will be a war of wits and words, not a swordfight. I expect you to conduct yourself as such when you are at the conference."

"May I rip him to shreds after the meeting concludes, Your Majesty?" Zahir wanted to know, his eyes narrowing as he searched for some loophole that would allow him to placate both his knightmaster and his pride.

"At all times, you will behave with the dignity appropriate for a Bazhir chief and the future Voice, Squire," responded the king, as unyielding as ever.

"That means 'no' in plain Common, doesn't it, sire?" sighed Zahir, recognizing miserably that he had been outfoxed.

"Indeed it does," his knightmaster confirmed, nodding.

"You take all the fun out of being a trained warrior, Your Majesty," grumbled Zahir, his temper rising as it gradually dawned on him just how much the king was going to interfere with his plans of punishing Mahmud as harshly as the detestable man deserved to be penalized. He could only hope that his cunning knightmaster had devised some clever, terrible punishment for Mahmud, because, otherwise, he would have to take matters into his own hands, even if doing so infuriated King Jonathan.

"Don't be saucy, and go put some supper in your mouth before it lands you in trouble." Clearly, King Jonathan was finished with this conversation, for he pointed a dismissive finger at the fire the Own squad had built over which a stew was bubbling and flooding Zahir's nose with its heady, tempting aroma.

Unable to resist filling his empty stomach with such a scrumptious smelling food, Zahir bowed and strode over to the fire to ladle out a bowlful of stew, his mouth still burning with a thousand things that he would like to say to the king about what exactly, in his opinion, constituted a just punishment for Mahmud.

That night, while he slept, he dreamed off all the wonderful—the right and justified—torture he would put Mahmud through before finally killing the repugnant man. All the next day, as he rode through the desert, he imagined that Sufia's hooves were pounding repeatedly into Mahmud's skull, and he longed to explain to the king all the fair, gruesome ends he had devised for Mahmud.

The next evening, as he knelt on the plush carpet before the low, fine oak table, which was covered with a variety of delicious dishes, for the conference with Queen Thayet, King Jonathan, and Mahmud, Zahir found that the words that had been smoldering inside him for over a day burned for exit from his mouth more fiercely than they ever had before.

"I trust that you know why I have summoned you," the king remarked as soon as the pleasantries were over, arching an eyebrow at Mahmud, as Zahir gritted his teeth, thinking that all this talk was an aggravating waste of time and energy that should have been focused on penalizing Mahmud directly.

"I would never presume to know what is on the Voice's mind," answered Mahmud, fiddling with his glass of sahlab in a manner that made it plain he knew precisely why he had been summoned.

"Don't lie, and, for once in your life, don't be a coward," spat Zahir, incensed that Mahmud was sipping a tasty orchid root beverage at a meeting with the king when his face should be getting transformed into mince meat instead. "If you are capable of any higher order thinking at all, you'll know you're here because the rebellion you and Nadir led against me failed."

"Is that what the Voice wishes to discuss with me?" inquired Mahmud, the goblet in his hand trembling worse than ever as he looked at King Jonathan.

"It is," the king affirmed, slicing into a choice chop of spiced lamb. His eyes piercing into Mahmud across the table, he went on, "Attempting to overthrow a chief is nothing less than an attempt to steal a power that does not belong to you, and thievery, as you are well aware, is not tolerated among the Bazhir."

"I would not have been chief in Zahir's place," protested Mahmud, sweat coalescing around his upper lip, as Zahir resisted the temptation to punch him in his lying mouth. "Nadir would have been the headman. Since I wouldn't have been chief, I would not have stolen any power from Zahir."

"That is not true, and I, for one, am insulted that you would believe my husband a fool enough to swallow that blatant falsehood," Thayet declared, her gaze and tone frigid. "After all, it would be quite obvious to anyone who gave the matter even the tiniest consideration that if you had succeeded in overthrowing Zahir as chief, you would have deprived him of his rightful position as leader of his tribe. Thus, you would have stolen from him, and so who you ultimately stole that power for is irrelevant to the question of whether or not you are a thief. Moreover, the argument that you were not aiming to steal Zahir's power for yourself doesn't hold much water, since the fact that you married your daughter to Nadir and the presence of your men to support Nadir's position both suggest that you planned to have a significant amount of control over the man you hoped to have replace Zahir. In fact, I think you wished to be the power behind Nadir if he became chief, and if that isn't an attempt to steal the authority that Zahir rightfully possessed over his tribe, I don't know what is."

"I intended no insult to you or to your husband with my earlier comment," sputtered Mahmud, sweat forming on his forehead as well as above his lip now. "I would never do anything to purposefully offend the Voice."

"Whether you intended to do so or not, you have managed to offend me for the reasons my wife just outlined," stated King Jonathan, his icy glare calling to mind glaciers.

"Please let me explain." Desperately, Mahmud leaned across the table as he made this entreaty, oblivious to the fact that he was dipping his clothing in his dish by mistake. "I only tried to have Nadir replace Zahir because I didn't think that Zahir was fit to rule, and, frankly, the fact that he gave Nasira her dowry upon Nadir's death rather than returning it to me proves that."

"How dare you?" snarled Zahir, his hands clenching around the knife he had been employing to cut his spiced lamb chop. "After you sent her off into an abusive marriage to further your own ambition, the very least she deserved was her dowry. She definitely doesn't deserve to be thrust into another nightmare of a marriage by you, and you surely don't warrant any money after what you did to your own daughter. A dowry is meant to protect a woman after she is wed, not to cushion her beastly father. If you cared about Nasira at all, you wouldn't complain about not receiving her dowry."

"I complain about not receiving her dowry because I can't care for her and make her a good marriage if I don't have access to her dowry," Mahmud snapped.

"You don't care for her, since you wouldn't have used her as a pawn in a deadly game of chess if you did," growled Zahir, blood drumming a battle march in his ears. "Also, you plainly didn't give a rat's dropping about making a good marriage for her the first time around, or else you wouldn't have pushed her into an abusive one against her will, and so, since you have shown yourself incompetent at making a good marriage for her, I have decided to give her the opportunity to make a good marriage for herself should she wish to do so."

"This is preposterous!" Mahmud seethed, veins popping out of his neck. "Surely the Voice will not stand for this injustice."

"If I thought it was an injustice, I would have overridden Zahir's decision before Nasira had even returned to your tribe, because I was there when Zahir passed judgment on your daughter," King Jonathan replied, his expression immovable.

"You allow this insolent pup to rob me of my daughter's dowry even while you accuse me of stealing from him!" His face aflame with obdurate pride, Mahmud smashed his fist against the table as he glowered at the Voice. "If anything is the very definition of madness, this is!"

"My patience is not infinite, Mahmud ibn Diyari, and so I would advise that you refrain from raising your voice in challenge to me," warned King Jonathan in a tone that shook with suppressed ire. "I support Zahir ibn Alhaz in his decision to grant Nasira her dowry just as I support him in his right to be chief of his tribe. However much either of those facts enrage you, neither of them is going to change."

"I hadn't realized that you were so fond of a runt of a chief who is so unfit for rule," Mahmud grunted, his features twisted with rancor.

"By the laws of my tribe, I'm as fit to rule my people as you are to lead yours," volleyed back Zahir, flaring up like parched grass when a match was put to it. "As far as size goes, I wouldn't mention it unless you enjoy being compared to a water buffalo that is definitely unsuited for leadership positions."

"That's more than enough shouting from both of you," said Queen Thayet, shooting a quelling glance at Mahmud and Zahir alike.

Glad that he had at least managed to get the last word in before the queen intervened, Zahir listened as the king pronounced, "To return to the main issue of why we are assembled, Mahmud ibn Diyari, you do not have the authority to determine who should no longer be chief among the Bazhir. Except for the gods, only I have the power to do that. By taking upon yourself the right to make and destroy chiefs, you usurped my authority, and I do not appreciate people appropriating powers that they have no right to, especially when the aforementioned powers are mine."

"I had no intention of challenging you or the gods." Swallowing, Mahmud bowed his head before the Voice. "For centuries, rival Bazhir chiefs have overthrown each other, and Voices have not interfered with the practice. I had no way of knowing that you would see my actions as an infringement on your power."

"Bazhir chiefs do have a history of intriguing against one another because of petty jealousies and insults to honor," agreed King Jonathan, his sharp gaze penetrating first Mahmud and then Zahir. "Indeed, it is this very tendency to engage in internal squabbles that weakened the Bazhir enough to allow my grandfather to conquer the desert at all and permitted my father to maintain some semblance of control over it. The Bazhir must learn that they are strong only when they are united behind the central authority of the Voice, and not when they are warring against each other. It is for this very reason that I will not allow your attempt to overthrow Zahir to go unpunished, Mahmud."

When Mahmud's, whose mouth was compressed in an impossibly thin line, made no reply, the king continued, "Since you were so eager to rob someone else of their position as chief, you will no longer be headsman of your people. From this day forth, your younger brother, Tahsin, will rule in your place. As for you, you will be given comfortable quarters here, where you will remain for the rest of your life. All of your visitors and correspondence will be monitored closely to ensure that you don't try to overthrow your brother as you did with Zahir."

"A gilded prison is still a prison." Wildly, Mahmud shook his head. "I refuse to tolerate this travesty of justice."

"You have no choice but to live with my judgment, Mahmud ibn Diyari," countered the king with a cold composure. "By law, I have every right to declare you unfit to be chief, and your men have already proven that they will not fight against me when they know my identity. That means that you have no legal or military ground on which to stand upon. Know also that if you try to rebel against me and act as chief of your people against my orders, I will have you executed."

For a long moment, Zahir watched as the rabid wrath in Mahmud's face was gradually replaced by horror and finally despair as the man understood that the king was correct; there was no way that he could successfully defy the Voice's ruling, and once the resolute Voice had passed a judgment, there would be a blizzard in the desert before he retracted it.

"You have ruined me," moaned Mahmud, his corpulent frame crumbling in upon itself, as though he had suffered a mortal wound.

"Any injury you suffered you brought upon yourself," King Jonathan responded grimly. "This is a downfall of your own creation."

Before Mahmud could stutter out an answer, the king gestured at a pair of sentries standing in the corner, commanding, "Please escort Mahmud to the rooms prepared for him."

As he witnessed the hunched Mahmud marched out of the royal chambers, Zahir could only scowl at the fact that he was denied the opportunity to exact the proper vengeance on the man, since, as far as Zahir was concerned, his knightmaster's sentence was far too lenient.

Once Mahmud and the guards had departed, King Jonathan turned his attention to Zahir. "As for you, Squire, you need to control your temper. A conference is not a shouting match, and he who screams the loudest doesn't always win."

"I did control my temper, sire," Zahir asserted, grinding his teeth as his glower deepened. "After all, I resisted the temptation to cut him to shreds."

"The definition of keeping your temper entails far more than not killing anyone at a meeting, Zahir," the king reminded him dryly.

"What does it matter if I lost my temper, anyway?" Mutinously, Zahir lifted his chin. "Ice can scorch people as well as fire can, Your Majesty. Only an idiot wouldn't know that after training under Lord Wyldon for four years. Ice and fire are just different ways of expressing rage or loathing. "

"Agreed." To Zahir's shock and bafflement, his knightmaster nodded. "However, ice is a calculated fury or hatred, whereas fire is an immediate, uncontrolled emotional reaction. As such, where ice is dignified, fire is not. Leaders are expected to hold themselves even while those around them crawl."

"Rulers are supposed to care, too." Zahir's nose joined his chin in the air. "Fire cares, but ice is indifferent. If horrible things result from fire feeling too much, just as terrible stuff emerges from ice not feeling enough. How does ice know it isn't in danger of not caring enough?"

"When ice no longer has to control its emotions, because it has none left, it is in danger of not caring enough," murmured King Jonathan, steepling his fingers.

"I bet you don't have to worry about controlling your emotions any more, sire," fumed Zahir, tears welling in his eyes as the dam walls holding his wrath and resentment at his knightmaster at bay were finally breached. "That's why you can just let that scum Mahmud go on living even though his co-conspirator, my cousin, who was far younger than he is and whose brain was twisted by my uncle Kamal, is dead, and even though several of Mahmud's men, who were innocent of any crime and were only doing their duty by obeying their chief, are slain, as well. How is it justice that he gets to lounge about here in comfortable quarters when Nadir might be suffering torment in the afterlife? How is it fair that Mahmud's soldiers are dead just because he was too ambitious while he goes on living in fine circumstances? You can call me petty and vengeful all you like, but I know that I'm just caring about what happened to people."

"Killing Mahmud won't restore the dead to life, Squire," the king reminded him softly.

"Well, stoning Masud didn't restore Myra's virginity, but you had no problem ordering his execution, Your Majesty," retorted Zahir. "Anyway, you weren't nearly so merciful with Nadir as you were with Mahmud. My cousin is dead because of you, and you didn't even care if I wanted him dead or not."

"If I recall correctly, you expressed a desire to stone your cousin the day he left Persopolis," his knightmaster pointed out. "Zahir, your policy on the death penalty fluctuates by the day, and it is entirely possible that a week from now you will be glad that I spared Mahmud's life."

"I'll never be glad you spared Mahmud." His jaw tightening, Zahir shook his head intractably. "By the way, I don't need a consistent policy on the death penalty, because no circumstances are ever exactly the same, so a consistent policy on anything is just a stupid excuse for lazy thinking. What need have I for a consistent policy on anything, sire, when I have a mind, a heart, and a conscience that are capable of working in every situation?"

"In this situation, your mind should be aware that my husband did not have the authority to have Mahmud executed, since he was not a member of your tribe, and, therefore, unlike Nadir, he had not committed treason against you," the queen interjected, and Zahir, who had forgotten just how well-versed she was in Bazhir law, blinked in surprise. "Your heart should also be informed that for someone as ambitious as Mahmud being alive but forever unable to rule may in many ways be a fate worse than death."

"What if, once he grows accustomed to not being in charge of his tribe any more, he comes to enjoy being locked up here with none of the pressures of being chief?" demanded Zahir, his eyes narrowing.

"That would mean that he has finally mastered his ambition, instead of being mastered by it," King Jonathan replied, fixing keen sapphire eyes upon Zahir. "Would it really be so awful if Mahmud found some redemption, Squire?"

"Yes, it would," exploded Zahir. "Mahmud doesn't deserve redemption, and he surely has done nothing to warrant any sort of happy ending, not after he has ruined the lives of so many good people."

"Perhaps I should tell you a story." Stroking his beard pensively, the king scrutinized Zahir.

"A story, sire?" echoed Zahir dubiously.

"Yes, a story, and one with a moral to it, as well." His knightmaster nodded, and went on, "Many years ago, when I was a page, my friends and I took a strong dislike to another page named Ralon of Malven. At first, it was hard for any of us to pinpoint precisely what about him was so offensive to us. Maybe it was something as silly as the manner in which he talked, the way he walked, or the gestures he made. I don't know, but whatever it was, we all took it upon ourselves to belittle and torment him, which we had no right to do. We had every right to dislike him, but it was undeniably wrong of us to make Ralon's life miserable just because of how we felt about him. Perhaps as a result of our treatment of him, since my friends and I were something of an elite within the pages' wing in my day, Ralon began hazing the younger pages. One particularly small page stood up to him, and Ralon developed an especial loathing for that page. Maybe because my friends and I were attracted to whatever made Ralon despise that page, we beat on Ralon for picking on the small page. We told ourselves that we were doing it to defend the small page, but the truth is that we were bullying him, because we outnumbered him, and, of course, he would take out the anger he felt when we humiliated him on the small page. Then, conveniently, we could use that as an excuse to bully Ralon again. It sounded like justice to us at the time, but, in hindsight, I know it was nothing less than brutality. Looking back, I realize that my friends and I were responsible for causing him to quit training as a page, which, in turn, resulted in him being disowned and joining the criminal underground in an attempt to avenge himself upon us."

"Ralon must not have been too bright if he kept picking on someone the Crown prince made it clear he wasn't supposed to haze," muttered Zahir. "If he were smart, he would have chosen someone else to haze."

"Ralon wasn't smart, and that makes what my friends and I did to Ralon worse, since if he were intelligent, he would have been better equipped to fight against us." Sighing, the king added, "Tell me, Zahir, what you think the moral of my story was."

"That bullying is acceptable as long as you are on the right side," snorted Zahir, miffed that the king admonished him for hazing when the man had committed the same crime as a page.

"Don't go all sarcastic on me now," King Jonathan chided. "Anyway, as you refuse to act your age, I shall explain to you that the point of my tale was to illustrate to you how often cruelty can masquerade as chivalry, how frequently vindictiveness can appear in the guise of justice, and how easy it is to tell yourself that you are defending somebody when really you are just looking for a reason to beat up someone else."

"Are you saying that's what I'm doing with this whole Mahmud issue, Your Majesty?" Zahir chewed on his lower lip.

"Only you can know that, Squire, because only you can see what is in your mind and heart," his knightmaster told him somberly. "There are some questions you have to answer for yourself, and that's one of them."

"I see." Grumbling inwardly that of course it would be the difficult questions that he would have to answer for himself after much soul-searching, Zahir rubbed his forehead.

"If knowledge speaks and wisdom listens, at this rate, I shall never be wise," the king remarked, shaking his head. "I swear that half the time I don't even realize how long I've been talking for."

"Well, if knowledge speaks, stupidity shouts," observed Zahir, his cheeks flushing as he finally felt the first inkling of shame over his display at the conference with Mahmud. "After all, certainty is nothing more than being mistaken at the top of one's voice."

"If it's any consolation, Zahir, you can't be completely stupid if you come up with quips like that," commented King Jonathan, grinning.

Thinking that he needed all the encouragement that he could get if he was going to untangle the complex web of his emotions enough to sort out the pure motivations from the selfish ones in the Mahmud affair, Zahir smiled back at his knightmaster.


	24. Chapter 24

Justice

That night, after he had finished his evening prayers (which, apart from the ritual elements, mainly consisted of pleas for mercy to be shown toward Nadir, although he suspected that such prayers were futile since judgment must already have been passed upon his cousin), Zahir stretched out on his sleeping mat. Rubbing his thumbs absently over the threaded blanket covering him, he returned his thoughts to Mahmud.

As usual, the mere idea of this hideously overweight chief and all the damage he had wrought transformed Zahir's blood into magma. It was all because of Mahmud that so many good men were dead…

Clamping his fists around his blanket, Zahir struggled to control his rage. As much as he preferred it to be otherwise, he didn't have the right to torture or kill Mahmud. Only the Voice had the authority to do such things to a headsman like Mahmud had been. If he permitted himself to violate the Bazhir law based on his own petty personal desires, he would be no better than Mahmud, and he could never allow that to happen.

It would be preferable to die than to become like Mahmud, because, he realized with a jolt, the ultimate goal of evil wasn't to destroy the good, but rather to pervert it. When it came down to it, evil wanted to twist good into a horrible entity that bore only a vague, discomfiting resemblance to its original form, and thereby claim the good for its own. The dark was forever trying to harden determination into adamantine cruelty, ambition into ruthlessness, passion into hatred, love into possessiveness, confidence into pride, justice into vengeance, and hope into despair.

Worse still, it was so easy to miss the telling signs of a dangerous, ugly transformation within yourself until it was too late, and the dark had almost consumed you. After all, the dark was forever hungry, since it was constantly devouring its young, and, thus required a steady stream of victims…

The fact that Nadir and Uncle Kamal were dead proved how mercilessly evil gobbled up its own children. Mahmud, he understood abruptly, would also be swallowed up by the dark. Locked alone all day, Mahmud's jealousy, fury, and loathing would eventually turn inward and consume him.

Suddenly, Zahir comprehended that Mahmud hadn't been let off easily. Mahmud's slain tribesmen were surely in a pleasant portion of the afterlife if such a place existed, and, if it didn't, they had gone from nothing to nothing, losing nothing in the process and being finally free of the risk of being killed for someone else's ambitions. Nadir had perished quickly, meaning he hadn't suffered at the end overmuch, and, if there wasn't an afterlife, he wasn't in agony now; if there was an afterlife, he had been brought before the allegedly perfect justice of the Black God's court, something that every mortal supposedly had to face in the end, and so ultimately was little to complain about. Nasira had wealth enough to live comfortably on her own if she wished, or to find a good husband if she didn't.

However, Mahmud would be trapped alone in his gilded prison. The knowledge that no crafty scheme could bring him to a better position would bring him to despair, and he would suffer a slow death. He would never know freedom again. He would never ride so fast that he felt like he was flying, walk barefoot across the almost blistering sand of the desert, cool off in the splendid wetness of a shimmering blue oasis, or gather around a roaring campfire to listen to ancient stories that always managed to sound new.

Even though he was allowed visitors, he had alienated his only daughter so much that she probably wouldn't bother to come see him, his only brother would be too busy running a tribe to visit, and all of his supposed friends among the chiefs would prove to be as false and as opportunistic as him by never contacting him again. Left to his own devices, Mahmud would learn that the worst torment of all wasn't other people; it was yourself and the terrible knowledge that you brought your greatest miseries upon yourself.

It was the law, Zahir reminded himself, that had permitted justice to be done in the case of Mahmud, Nasira, and Nadir. From now on, he would have to remember that, for a Bazhir, there was no fairness, mercy, or goodness outside the law.

Feeling a deep sense of peace that could only result from the soothing understanding that justice had been achieved, Zahir closed his eyes and drifted off into the most tranquil sleep he had enjoyed for weeks.

The next morning at the conclusion of his daily lessons in becoming the Voice, Zahir remarked, "Sire, I've been thinking about what you said at the conference last evening, and I am glad that you didn't kill Mahmud, after all. It's the perfect justice for him to be imprisoned here for the rest of his life, and it would be wrong for either of us to break the law by killing him. After all, if we did such a thing, Mahmud would have won, because we would have descended to his level."

"Exactly, Squire. Sometimes we can win the battle and lose the true war as a result." The king nodded. "I'm happy to hear that you figured that out for yourself."

"If I had surrendered to the urge to kill Mahmud myself, I wouldn't have learned it until too late." Grimly, Zahir shook his head. "As it is, I'm practically as depraved as Mahmud, Your Majesty."

"That's incorrect, Zahir," King Jonathan answered sternly. "You are a far nobler person than Mahmud ever was, and you care more about your people than Mahmud ever cared about his."

"If I'm so good, why do I have to perpetually fight myself to do the right thing, sire?" snorted Zahir, disgusted by his own susceptibility to temptation.

"Living a moral life is a challenge for everybody, Squire," his knightmaster replied, squeezing his shoulder. "Everyone who wishes to do good must forever battle the impulse to do evil. The only ones liberated from that struggle are those, like Mahmud, who have given it up entirely and have enslaved themselves to the darkness inside of them."

"In that case, the natural state of humanity is depravity, Your Majesty," observed Zahir, biting his lip so hard it bled and a sickening, metallic taste flooded his mouth. "Mahmud is proof of that."

"Mahmud proves no such thing," the king countered, his tone sharpening. "If depravity were the natural state of humanity, you wouldn't find Mahmud so revolting. The conscience each one of us has is evidence that all of us have not only an innate understanding of what is right, but also the drive to do the right thing as well as a tendency to feel guilty over doing the wrong thing. Humanity, through its conscience, naturally seeks goodness, and depravity, or the complete crushing of conscience, is the unnatural, perverted state of humanity."

"My conscience isn't strong enough to protect me from my own baser instincts, sire," mumbled Zahir despondently. "I need other beings like you to tell me what's wrong when my conscience can't and to push me to do the right thing when my conscience alone isn't forceful enough to do so."

"That doesn't make you weak, if that's what you fear, Zahir," King Jonathan assured him softly. "None of us are meant to function on our own. We all need others to console us and challenge us to become more than we believe we can possibly be, just as we are called to return the favor by comforting others and pushing them forward on their journeys."

"It sounds all nice and touchy-feely when you phrase it like that, but I don't see you getting comforted or challenged by anyone, Your Majesty," scoffed Zahir, aggravated by the king's insistence that he wasn't weak in this matter when he was well aware of just how frail he was.

"You must be blind as a bat, then," his knightmaster responded crisply. "For example, I get challenged by you, my insolent squire, on a regular basis—"

"And I'm incorrect all the time," muttered Zahir, rolling his eyes, "so it's not the same thing, sire."

"Don't roll your eyes at me," King Jonathan chided. As Zahir resisted the urge to roll his eyes again, the king went on brusquely, "Anyway, you are wrong on some occasions, but on others you may very well be right. In still other instances, neither of us may be correct. However, whether you are right or wrong, you have good reasons behind your beliefs, and it is always beneficial to be challenged, since it enhances one's logic and strengthens one's conscience."

"Being challenged is wonderful as long as you aren't tempted to do the wrong thing," remarked Zahir dryly.

"Being challenged is often positive, since we are often pushed to become better than we imagined we could be, and temptation is not necessarily as terrible as you make it out to be, Zahir," his knightmaster informed him. "Temptation can be regarded in two ways: either as a means of surrendering to the darkness inside and outside of you by giving into the temptation, or as an opportunity to strengthen the light blazing inside you by refusing to surrender to the temptation. Without temptation, it would be easy to be virtuous, and there wouldn't be much glory in that, would there?"

"I guess not," agreed Zahir, lowering his head. "You see, Your Majesty, I need you to challenge me like that, because I don't think of that sort of stuff on my own."

"At your age, you aren't supposed to, and when you are older, you will," King Jonathan told him, lifting up his chin and gazing seriously into his eyes. "However, you can rest assured that I will be around to challenge you for a long time yet. Fortunately for you, I have such a domineering personality that the difficult task for you won't be convincing me to stick around in your life, but rather getting me to leave you alone."

"How comforting, sire," grunted Zahir, but, despite his sarcastic comment, he did feel reassured. After all, if nothing was worse than being alone, nothing could be more soothing than the knowledge that you would never be abandoned.


	25. Chapter 25

Charity and Tradition

After Zahir had largely made peace with the fact that Mahmud was to be imprisoned for life while his cousin was dead, he found that his time in the desert passed in a peculiar fashion. His days, spent studying and attending the banquets in the evenings, seemed to go by in a pleasantly slow manner, but the days accumulated into a week more swiftly than he would have liked.

Before he knew it, the month of fasting had drawn to a close, and the royal entourage went through the excruciatingly prolonged process of packing their belongings and getting in everybody else's way that heralded their final departure from Persopolis.

"If only half the unnecessary, fawning courtiers who came down here with the king and queen returned with us, we could make double the time," muttered a disgruntled Zahir under his breath to Trevor, as the progress rode out of the desert city at last. "Also, if most nobles didn't bring a castle's worth of clothes with them, we could double our time again."

"When that happens, you can call me the emperor of Carthak." Mischievously, Trevor grinned. "It's best not to waste your wishes on things that will never come true."

"What are you wishing for, then?" Zahir wanted to know, discovering that Trevor's humor was, as usual, a balm for his frustration.

"That we'll arrive at the Royal Palace some time prior to Midwinter," answered Trevor, his grin blossoming into a full-fledged smile. "If you ask me, that's a reasonable goal to set, and my mentor, a very wise man, always says that the first step in achieving any goal is to set a reasonable one."

"That's funny," observed Zahir, snickering. "My knightmaster always says that the first step in achieving anything is creating an ethnically diverse team to tackle the problem."

"Does he really?" Dubiously, Trevor arched an eyebrow.

"No," Zahir admitted, his smirk increasing, "but it sounds like something a progressive would say. I mean, progressives honestly think that ethnic diversity has solved more problems than it has caused when anyone over the age of five who gave the issue any thought would know that a million crises would have been averted if everybody remained with their own cultural group on their own land."

"I think that the problems start when more than one cultural group claims a territory as their own," Trevor remarked, shaking his head. "Besides, I see nothing wrong with integrating various ethnic groups into a country's government."

"Even when those being integrated are mere token nods to political correctness?" snorted Zahir. "You don't find that a tad insulting to your higher order thinking skills? I sure do, despite the fact that I am a Bazhir, and so am not supposed to have any higher order thinking capabilities to offend at all."

"I refuse to spend my life taking umbrage at that which is not intended to be insulting," replied Trevor. "I would suggest that for your own happiness you institute a similar policy."

"I forgot for a moment that I was dealing with a diplomat," Zahir scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Next time, I shall have to run my response by the Joint Committee of Verbosity for further wordification before attempting to speak to you, since plainly we are not talking the same language."

"I am but a lowly diplomat-in-training." Here, Trevor attempted a graceful half-bow that almost caused him to topple off his horse in a most ungainly manner. "My woeful inexperience is apparent in the offense I unwittingly heaped upon you."

"Oh, be quiet," grumbled Zahir. "If you aren't going to say anything useful, keep your mouth shut. Don't yatter on for several minutes saying nothing at all, and don't talk all day at the expense of actually accomplishing anything. Mithros, the world would be a better place if all diplomats had to learn that."

"We do learn that," Trevor insisted, his gaze earnest. "Unfortunately, Zahir, this world is filled with people who have differing opinions on how things should be done. Those various opinions deserved to be heard, and compromises need to be made before anything can be done."

"Well, compromises could be reached and opinions could be heard much faster if diplomats followed the novel concept of actually saying what they mean instead of dancing endlessly around issues," muttered Zahir stubbornly, refusing to be outsmarted.

"Many wars would start if diplomats began saying exactly what they felt or thought," Trevor pointed out. "Bluntness miffs many individuals."

"Only because they aren't accustomed to honesty, and only because the truth is too hideous for them to bear, although that hardly makes the truth a lie or the person who points out the blatant lack of beauty responsible for the ugliness, does it?" responded Zahir tersely.

"I suppose one could make that argument, yes," Trevor said.

"Don't do that," mumbled Zahir, burying himself in his cloak, as a frigid gust of wind tore through him. During the time he and Trevor had been conversing, the progress had left the sandy desert for muddy roads surrounded by barren trees and dead plants. As far as he was concerned, there was no point leaving the desert for a landscape that would not awaken until spring, especially when that landscape was considerably colder than the desert. Of course, he supposed that he should be grateful that the mud road wasn't yet coated in a slippery sheen of snow and ice.

"Do what?" asked Trevor, his forehead furrowing in puzzlement.

"Don't agree with me in that tone that suggests that you are still right, but you are only agreeing with me because you are the bigger person," Zahir muttered testily, wishing that his teeth weren't chattering, as that made him sound more pathetic than authoritative. "It makes winning an argument with you a very unsatisfactory experience."

"If I may humbly state that I believe the problem lies with your belief that in order to win an argument with me, you must defeat me, when, in reality, it is entirely possible for us both to win the same argument," commented Trevor affably.

"You can't do anything humbly," Zahir groused, wrinkling his nose, and not caring if he was being the donkey who accused the rooster of having too large a head. "That's just your problem. Anyway, it's absolute nonsense that both of us can win the same argument. If there is a winner, then there has to be a loser."

"That's assuming there is only one correct answer," Trevor pointed out, his tone amiable. "For many things, there are many valid answers, and, thus, multiple people can be right."

Zahir was about to grumble that took all the glory out of a victory, but he was cut off when his companion, jabbing his finger down the lane eagerly, exclaimed, "We're approaching the village where we are to eat at the inn. Splendid. I was just starting to get hungry."

"No doubt you'll lose your appetite as soon as you catch sight of the food," snickered Zahir, who was in a foul temper because, since he had chosen today to make up the day of fasting he had missed when Nadir attacked his village, he hadn't eaten breakfast and he wouldn't be consuming the midday meal, either.

"If you followed the rule of etiquette that dictates that if one can't say anything nice at all, one shouldn't say anything, you would never talk at all, Zahir," observed Trevor with a heartiness that somehow removed any sting his words otherwise might have possessed.

As he established as much, the entourage rode into the village, which was no more than a collection of ramshackle huts that appeared in imminent danger of being swept up by a mighty gust of wind. Most of the huts had no doors to keep out the harsh winter weather, many of the thatch roofs had holes in them, and the structures that had windows covered them with animal hides rather than glass.

Looking around the obviously impoverished village, Zahir swallowed hard. Truth be told, he wasn't used to seeing poverty like this. Although there were poor and rich families among the Bazhir, the distinctions between them were not as painfully apparent as they were in the rest of Tortall. Among his people, everyone lived in tents, instead of a minority of people dwelling in magnificent castles while most beings huddled in miserable shacks.

Among the Bazhir, the chiefs did not hold themselves above those they led in the manner that the Tortollan nobles separated themselves from the common masses in their fiefs. Tribes were so small that chiefs could never forget that every member was intertwined in a complex, important web, and the nightly communion with the Voice ensured that the leader of the Bazhir always remembered that they were one.

Glancing around at the hovels around him as he approached the inn, which was the largest building as well as the one in the best repair, Zahir felt guilty about complaining about the quality of the food those in the monarchs' train would be offered. After all, at least they would be provided with something to eat, unlike the many Tortallans who feared starvation in the winter and had to worry about where their next meal would come from…

It was a luxury, indeed, to be able to gripe about the taste or texture of the food you were given, he rebuked himself as he trailed Trevor into the inn. No wonder one of the many reasons the Bazhir participated in the month of fasting was to remind themselves of what it was like to not have their basic needs met and to emphasize just how much they took for granted in their day to day existence…

While he was engrossed in his ruminations, he absently sank onto a bench across from Trevor and a pockmarked serving girl placed a steaming bowl of lamb stew in front of him along with a plate of thickly buttered bread. As the heady aroma of the stew deluged his nostrils, he realized with a start that the cook at this inn must have actually known how to prepare food and had probably made the best meal he could for the monarchs. It was a pity that Zahir had to refrain from eating something that smelled so delicious, but, then again, he supposed his sacrifice would have little value if he didn't deprive himself of something that mattered to him.

"Your stew is losing more liquid to evaporation than to your eating it," Trevor remarked after a moment when Zahir failed to pick up his spoon.

"I won't be eating until after sunset tonight," explained Zahir, ignoring his growling stomach. "I accidentally ate before the sun went down one day during the month of fasting, and I want to make up for that day now."

"When did you become so religious?" Trevor asked, amused.

"I'm not religious, but rather honorable." Zahir's lips thinned. "Trevor, I made a promise to myself that I would not eat during the day for a month. Since I broke that vow to myself, I must atone for that now. A man has nothing if he doesn't have his word, and he can't trust anyone if he lies to himself."

"Well, it's most ill-bred to eat while your companion doesn't." Sighing, Trevor put down his spoon. "That means I shall have to abstain from eating, too, even though it does seem a pity to waste such tasty lamb stew."

"We don't have to waste it," gasped Zahir, leaning forward in excitement as a wonderful idea surged through his brain like lightning darting across a sky during a summer thunderstorm. "We'll give our food to some destitute villager who needs it more."

"My mother always said that I should be the change that I wish to see in the world. Still, how will we decide which villager to give our food to?" Trevor wanted to know, as the pair of them rose, clutching their dishes of bread and stew.

"We'll give the food to whichever poor villager we see first." As they crossed the crowded inn and wrapped their cloaks about them once more, Zahir shrugged. "In a place like this, anyone can benefit from any food we offer, and it is nearly impossible to determine who needs our help the most."

"I suppose that's true," agreed Trevor, his voice grim as they left the inn, stepping out into the cold wind that buffeted them instantly, as though attempting to force them back indoors.

For a short time, the two of them walked down the muddy lane, hoping to spot a villager brave enough to be outdoors on a day as nasty as this one, and fearing that they would have to resort to walking up to doorless huts if they didn't. Finally, to their relief, they saw a flaxen-haired girl wrapped in a fur coat that was too small for her hunched over like a crone, gathering tinder from a woodpile.

"Good afternoon," Trevor called, navigating a twisting course through the mud puddles over to the girl with Zahir at his side. "It's a rather chilly day, isn't it?"

"Ma told me that if I talk to strangers she'll wear me out." Without bothering to glance up at them, the girl continued to dump wood into her threadbare apron, which she was using like a sack.

"You've already spoken to us," Zahir informed her dryly, holding out his bread and stew. "Now you might as well take the food we're offering you back to your family."

"Ma says never to accept food from strangers, 'cause it might be poisoned." Warily, the girl looked up at him, her face pinched like a prune before its time from being forced to see so much death and survive so much deprivation. Studying her, Zahir understood with a surge of shock that northern nobles didn't just try to crush the Bazhir—they also attempted to destroy their own serfs.

"Why would we want to poison you?" Zahir made his voice gruff, because he sensed somehow that this girl wouldn't know how to handle softness after spending all of her life surrounded by roughness. "You aren't important enough for anyone to trouble with that."

"I ain't important enough for you to be givin' me your food, neither," argued the girl, her eyes narrowing. "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing," Zahir educated her brusquely. "It's fit for a king, or it should be given that His Majesty is eating the same stew and bread in the inn right now."

"Why are you handin' it out to me, then?" demanded the girl.

"We're fasting, or going without food to strengthen our relationship with the divine," Trevor said, smiling disarmingly at her.

"It must be nice to be able to choose not to eat," the girl muttered under her breath, but at last she lowered her defenses enough to take the dishes from their outstretched hands. "Well, Ma always says that even though you shouldn't beg, you also shouldn't refuse charity when there is little enough of it in the world as it is."

"Your ma sounds like a very wise woman," observed Trevor, bowing courteously to her.

"That ain't what she says." Offering a tentative grin that made her finally appear a bit like a child, the girl curtsied awkwardly. "She is always mumblin' that she isn't smart enough to be the village idiot."

"Only the greatest sages among us realize their own ignorance, while the fools among us blunder around mistakenly believing they know everything, and by my pitiful attempt at sounding intelligent, we can all discern that I am nothing more than a very pompous fool," replied Trevor, his beam growing so that it extended from ear to ear. Watching him, Zahir suspected that his friend was pleased at charming this hard country girl.

"Are you fool enough to be wantin' to come into our house?" the girl inquired.

Although the question was directed toward Trevor, Zahir intervened. "I'm afraid that the king and queen will be ready to leave soon, so we shouldn't stick around."

"In that case, I'll be switchin' the food to our own dishes so you two can be on your way," responded the girl. With that, she spun on her heel and disappeared into her family's hovel, her apronful of wood slung over her shoulders and the dishes balanced on her palms.

For a few moments, Zahir and Trevor stood, their cloaks billowing behind them in the wind, outside the shack, waiting silently for the girl to return with the inn's plates and bowls.

When she handed them back the dishes, scrubbed clean, Zahir couldn't refrain from staring at the pristine pottery. Catching sight of him gawking down at the clean plates and bowls, the girl glowered at him, and established curtly, "We're poor, but we ain't savages. We've got soap and water, and we know how to wash dishes better than most nobles."

"Of course you aren't savages," murmured Zahir, rubbing his thumb over the rim of the bowl he was clutching. "You're human, which means that, just like the rest of us, you sometimes act like animals."

"Humph. As long as we are agreed that my family ain't any more savage than anyone else, that's fine I suppose," pronounced the girl, lifting her nose into the air and disappearing into her hut once more without another word.

Caught by surprise by her abrupt dismissal of them, Zahir and Trevor remained motionless for a couple of seconds. Then, recovering themselves, they made their way back to the inn. While they did so, Trevor commented, "We never learned her name."

"She never learned ours, either." Zahir shrugged. "It doesn't matter as odds are a million to one that we'll never meet again in this lifetime."

"All the same, I should like to think of her as Nell," stated Trevor in a hushed tone. "I always thought Nell was a beautiful name, and, if I had a sister, I would love it if she were called that."

"Nell," Zahir repeated, swirling the letters around in his mouth and tasting them as though they were spices. "Yes, I suppose it is a rather nice name-simple, but pretty."

As he spoke, they entered the inn, where most of the royal progress was still finishing their meals. When they passed King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, Zahir's knightmaster rested a staying hand on his arm, asking, "Where were you, Zahir?"

It was on the tip of Zahir's tongue to claim that he had visited the privy, but nobody ever went to the privy with dishes full of food and returned with them empty. Besides, that would be a lie, and an honorable Bazhir didn't tell falsehoods. After all, lies were disgraceful, and they definitely shouldn't be spread in order to cover up for an act of charity that wasn't really shameful…

"Trevor and I went for a walk, Your Majesty," Zahir answered irascibly. "I wasn't aware that was against the law."

"Insubordination to your monarch is against many laws." King Jonathan's grip on his arm tightened. "You also have failed to truly answer my question, Squire."

"Very well." Zahir's lips pressed together tetchily. "I went out to give my meal to some poor family who needed it more. Do you have a problem with that, sire?"

"No." His knightmaster arched an eyebrow. "Apparently, it is you who has the issues with that."

"What makes you say that, Your Majesty?" Zahir scowled, wishing that his knightmaster would make sense for once.

"You wouldn't have been so evasive if you weren't ashamed of what you did." The king's eyes riveted on Zahir's. "It seems that you are still embarrassed by your own compassion."

"I'm not humiliated," protested Zahir vehemently, his cheeks flaming. "I just don't desire to brag about what I did, and I don't want you to think for one moment that I did it to make you proud of me, sire, because that would make giving the food to that impoverished family about me. That would be all wrong, since it was meant to be about them, and the last thing an act of charity should become is a selfish ego boost."

"It's fine to be pleased yourself when you've done the right thing, just as it is acceptable to be cross with yourself when you do an immoral one," King Jonathan told him gently. "Giving your meal to the poor was something you can feel proud about."

"Yes, Your Majesty," muttered Zahir, although he thought that he had done nothing worth bragging about. After all, the family would be as hungry tomorrow as they had been the week before, and he was responsible for turning a blind eye to the suffering that most commoners, whether in the country or in the city, living in Tortall endured. In fact, he knew that the only way he was able to eat every night was by not contemplating the masses who did without supper, and staring that stark truth in the face made him ponder whether every food he placed in his mouth would taste like sawdust to him from now on.

To drag his mind away from such remorseful ruminations, he went on fervently, "It's not fair that these villagers are spending the winter in rundown shacks fearing that they'll starve when the nobles who live here didn't work half as hard as the peasants did but get to feast in their castle all winter, anyway."

"It's not just, although the law, unfortunately, doesn't prevent it." His knightmaster sighed. "However, social orders can't be overturned overnight, or mayhem would result, and you starving yourself in protest will hardly feed the peasants."

"Among the Bazhir, it's different." Furiously, Zahir shook his head. "Our chiefs have honor. We care about and suffer with our people, instead of exploiting them."

"Strictly speaking, the rules of fealty should ensure that the nobles conduct themselves with a concern for the wellbeing of their people, just as the code of honor among the Bazhir is intended to guarantee that chiefs focus on the needs of their people," King Jonathan reminded him. "That being said, just as some Bazhir chiefs ignore the code of honor, some nobles pay attention only to the rules of fealty that pertain to what they are owed, rather than what they owe."

"You should be able to make the chiefs and the nobles act honorably, sire," Zahir burst out. "You're the king."

"As I've explained to you before, Squire, that doesn't mean that I can or should change everything," pointed out his knightmaster wryly.

"I don't want you to change anything." Mulishly, Zahir folded his arms across his chest.  
"Progressives always associate better with change when really better is going back to the way things were. Better is restoring the sense of duty and honor people used to have. Tradition only works if people let it and actually do what is demanded of them."

"I can't turn back time, Zahir, and I certainly do not have the power to return us all to some romantic days that may never have existed outside of your imagination," the king declared pointedly.

Flushing, Zahir snarled, "I don't have an imagination half as active as Your Majesty's wild imagination seems to believe I do."

Fortunately, his words were masked by the chaos that ensued as the progress exited the inn and mounted their horses en masse. When they left the building, Zahir discovered that a faint powder of snow that melted like sugar when it hit the ground had started to fall.

As they rode north, the size and density of the descending flakes increased, so, by the time that an hour had passed, Zahir's cloak was soaked through, and the boughs of trees near the roads were bent with a heavy burden of snow and ice. Looking at the icicles that were shimmering like mirages in the sparse winter sunlight that managed to shine through the leaden clouds, he noted inwardly that such scenery would be very attractive if only the wind blowing snow into his eyes didn't make admiring the environment a bit of a challenge.

Then, before he could process what was happening, a freezing meteorite rammed into his cheeks. Cursing, he rubbed the melting snow from his face, and snapped at Trevor, "Diplomats shouldn't throw snowballs."

"They shouldn't, but diplomats-in-training should." Playfully, Trevor nudged Zahir's shoulder.

"That is absolute rubbish," snorted Zahir, collecting snow from a branch, wadding it into a ball, and launching the missile at Trevor before the other boy could dodge. "Training should prepare you for real life."

"Then consider this training for real life." Trevor tossed another snowball at Zahir, who ducked smoothly, ignoring his mount's whinny of aggravation with his immature pursuits. "You'll have to survive worse in battle, you know."

For ten minutes, they shot snowballs and taunts at each other until they were both breathless. Their cheeks as crimson as holly berries, they lapsed into a companionable quiet until Zahir panted, "I never realized there was anything good about winter before, but I haven't done something that fun in a long time."

"Surely you got into snowball fights with fellow pages during training?" Shooting Zahir a sidelong glance, Trevor cocked his head.

"Pages are much too busy to waste time with such frivolity," stated Zahir sharply. "Lord Wyldon didn't mind fistfights because they honed our combat skills, but he would have chopped of the head of anyone caught in a snowball fight. Snowball fights are most undignified, after all."

"Snowball fights, sledding, and days of for excessive amounts of snow were common enough at the university," remarked Trevor. "I suppose at the university we were permitted more freedom to be young, since we weren't being prepared to die for Crown and country in a few years. If you want to teach someone to be a warrior who will survive in a battle, there must be a lot of information to cram into a timeframe that can't help but be too short."

Shaking his head to clear it of gruesome images of gory fates he and his yearmates could meet, Zahir said in a disjointed fashion, "Thanks for being my friend, Trevor. You're cheerfulness and serenity really have helped me see things in a new light, and I appreciate that."

"You've assisted in my development, as well." Trevor's eyes locked on his, and somehow Zahir knew that the other teenager wasn't engaging in a tactful lie. "I would never have given my meal to a poor peasant family tonight if it weren't for you. Your passion, sense of justice, and dedication to honor are a valuable example to me."

"Apparently they are nothing more than delusional byproducts of my overactive imagination," grumbled Zahir, recalling his conversation with his knightmaster.

"My desire for peace is nothing more than a delusional byproduct of my overactive imagination." Trevor's lips quirked upward in a slight grin. "You and I both like to fight the losing battles nobody else will, because we are convinced that's the only way we'll ever improve anything."


	26. Chapter 26

Author's Note: Sorry it is a bit short and fluffy, but, next chapter, the plot will become more baroque again, I promise, so please bear with me, and just enjoy a rare happy chapter by me.

Winter Wonderland

"Zahir, you've returned!" shouted Aisha delightedly, her cloak billowing out behind her as she darted down one of the shoveled brick pathways on the snowy Royal Palace grounds to engulf him in a strangling embrace. Even as his rib cage collapsed in on itself like a tumbling stack of cards, he felt a surge of relief at feeling her solid body pressed against his. After being separated from her for so long, it was amazing to be able to feel his sister again in the flesh, and to reassure himself that they were both still alive and well. "All in one piece, too. A double blessing."

"You make it sound like I was the one fighting immortals," he commented dryly. Pulling away from her crushing hug, he examined her critically. He smiled when he saw that she was appeared as strong, healthy, and, if the beam stretching across her lips and the flush dotting her cheeks were any indicators, as happy as ever. "I arrived late last night. I was just heading down to the Rider barracks to see you, but now that doesn't seem to be necessary." As Cait and Keir, who had been walking with Aisha down the path, approached, he added, "Of course, I wanted to visit the two of you, as well."

At any rate, he had wished to visit Cait to discover whether she was even half as spectacular as he remembered. However, he had been afraid to do so, because he was terrified that she would either be as wonderful as he recalled or that she wouldn't be, and he hadn't known which nightmare would be worse.

Now, drinking in the sight of her for the first time in far too long, he recognized as his heart began to pound at twice its normal rate, his winter clothes which hadn't been warm enough earlier suddenly were oppressive, and sweat coalesced on his palms, that she wasn't as glorious as he remembered—she was even more amazing.

Her short height made him long to draw her against his chest and protect her from every evil. Her oversized front teeth reminded him of squirrels and chipmunks—animals that most northerners defined as pests, but that he had always found rather adorable. Her unruly auburn hair made his fingers itch to tame it, and her dancing rust colored eyes made him wish to do whatever he could to prevent her from losing that special spark that caused her eyes to gleam in a way that was infinitely more valuable to him than any gemstone. No, she wasn't beautiful by the world's standards, but she was perfect to him, and that was all that mattered in the final analysis.

Reminding himself firmly that well-bred Bazhir males did not gaze upon a woman with such lust, he focused his attention on Keir. Truth be told, he had not wanted to visit Keir at all, since he remembered the harsh words that they had exchanged before Zahir rode off to the desert. Not only could he not figure out whether he still bore a grudge against Keir for the other boy's comments about the Bazhir being prone to incest, but he had also been nervous that Keir might be cross with him. Yet, when his eyes met Keir's, he felt the tension ebb from his coiled muscles. Judging by the other lad's expression, Keir either didn't recall the argument or else was determined to act as though it had never transpired.

The Zahir of a month ago would have experienced a rush of righteous indignation and demanded an apology from Keir. However, the new Zahir didn't care too much about receiving a formal apology. This new Zahir was glad enough that there was peace between them without having to push for a debate that he would have to win in order to satisfy his pride. This new Zahir was content to forgive and forget. In the mind of this new Zahir, one of the greatest gifts of friendship was that you didn't have to say you were sorry, because all of your crimes were already forgiven. Zahir didn't know whether the new or old Zahir had been wiser, and, right now, he didn't particularly care. After all, the old Zahir was far more exacting about such issues than this new Zahir.

"We're pleased to see you, too," Cait told him, and Zahir's stomach performed somersaults of exaltation that she was pleased to see him even as he lifted an anxious, fervent prayer to any listening deity that she would remain so. "Keir and I were about to build a snowman with Aisha. Since she's never made a snowman before, we were all very excited."

"Especially because it's one of the few fun things that you can do outside in the winter," observed Keir, snickering as the four of them continued down the pathway.

"For the most part, the best thing you can do in the winter is curl under your blankets and wait for spring," Zahir agreed, rubbing his gloved palms together to warm them.

"Oh, what hogwash," scolded Cait, nudging Zahir and Keir. "My grandmother shows more excitement about snow than the pair of you combined, and her bones never stop creaking. Both of you should be ashamed that you have less strength and courage than an old woman. Anyway, there are plenty of entertaining activities to do in the winter if you don't spend all your time complaining about the snow, and actually enjoy it. I mean, there are the snowball fights, the skating, the sledding, and the snowman building. How could anyone even remotely sane not love those things?"

"All those things put together don't begin to compensate for the back-breaking labor of shoveling," Keir retorted.

"Oh, it's not as if you have to do the shoveling here," scoffed Cait, rolling her eyes. Before Keir could answer, she went on eagerly, pointing at the white sheet of snow on the ground surrounding them, "Here's the perfect spot to construct our snowman."

Obediently, the others followed her off the path, sinking up to their knees in snow. As they rolled up a massive snowball and packed it together to create the snowman's bottom, Aisha shoved her scarf away from her face and asked her brother, "What news do you have of the desert?"

"A lot," replied Zahir, sighing and thinking that he had almost allowed himself to forget Nadir's final treason. "We have to get into the habit of exchanging letters when we are separated from each other by our duties. Anyway, while I was in the desert, Nadir continued to plot against me. He married Nasira, the daughter of father's rival chief Mahmud. Then he used Mahmud's men to conquer my tribe, and Laila had to ride across the desert to warn me of what he was doing, so that the king could help me take back what was mine. Now Nadir is dead, and Mahmud is imprisoned for life in Persopolis."

"Are Laila and Hassan all right?" Aisha pressed, gaping at him.

"They are more than all right, Aisha." Zahir's lips slid upward into a slight grin as they finished rolling the first ball and started making a second one to serve as the snowman's middle. "Laila is expecting their first child, and she was relieved to hear that you were alive, pursuing your dream."

"I hope she has a gorgeous little daughter," murmured Aisha, smiling wistfully. Then, suddenly, the absently yearning expression on her face shifted and she hurled a mound of snow at Zahir, who, unfortunately, didn't see the approaching missile until it had smashed into his nose. As Zahir swiped the snow out of his eyes, Aisha stated reproachfully, "You should definitely write to me when you have important news like that."

"If you cared about these things, you would never have left our family," Zahir volleyed back, glaring at his younger sibling. "By the way, don't throw snowballs at me, because I might not always have the chivalry not to attack you back."

"Oh, spare me your condescending chivalry," muttered Aisha, wrinkling her nose as though someone had thrust dung under it. "I'm not nearly delicate enough to need it."

"If you twist your nose up like that in this cold, it will get stuck like that," Zahir teased. "Really, you are much too ugly as it is to risk that happening to you."

"What claptrap," snorted Aisha, waving a dismissive hand, as they placed the second snowball on top of the first one and began rolling up a third ball. "Anyone who isn't as blind as a mole can see that I am the prettiest Rider of all."

"You're the most modest one of all, too," Cait put in, giggling.

"Of course." Aisha's eyes glittered impishly. "My incredible humility is utterly unparalleled by anybody, but I don't like to mention that for fear that of sounding egotistical."

"Mithros forbid that you sound egotistical," remarked Keir, all sarcasm. Looking between Aisha and Zahir, he added, "Arrogance is plainly genetic."

"At any rate, talent obviously is," Zahir responded, dropping the last snowball onto the other two.

After they had given the snowman stick arms, coal eyes, a button nose, and wrapped a scarf around its neck, Cait announced, "It's time to return to the Rider barracks for some Midwinter buns, which most experts agree are the best things about Midwinter."

Buoyed by the prospect of a hot, fresh bun laced with cinnamon and sugar, the four of them hurried back to the Rider barracks. When Zahir entered the mess hall, he saw as he grabbed a Midwinter bun with the others and took a seat at a long wooden table that the ceiling and windows were decorated with holly, pine cones, evergreens, and mistletoes. Wondering if he dared to maneuver so that he was caught under a mistletoe with Cait and deciding that he didn't, Zahir busied himself with devouring his pastry.

The sweet bun was so addicting after his time in the cold that it took him a minute to realize that, across from him, Aisha and Keir were shredding bits of their treats and finger-feeding them to one another. About to snap at the pair of them to kindly refrain from doing anything at the table that made him wish to vomit, he found that the words melted from his tongue when a gentle palm rested upon his elbow.

As he spun to look at Cait, who had laid the stilling hand upon his arm, she whispered in his ear, "We could do that, you know."

Imagining what it would be like to accidentally brush his tongue or his lips against her fingers when she fed him some of her Midwinter bun, Zahir discovered that it required all of his willpower to choke out, "No, Cait, you know that we can't."

Inwardly, Zahir cursed himself for sounding weak when he meant to convey strength, but it was so difficult to appear firm when everything inside you was screaming to surrender. He knew that he was a Bazhir and she was a northerner, that she was a commoner and he was a chief, and that for every reason that mattered, their relationship would never in a million years work. Still, he longed to kiss her, comb her hair with his fingers, and just breathe in the delicious scent her skin emitted, but he couldn't do that, because he would never be able to marry her. Only scumbags kissed girls they couldn't wed, and he wouldn't permit himself to descend to that level.

"Don't be ridiculous." To Zahir's horror, tears were glistening like stars in Cait's breathtaking eyes now. "Of course we can. You want to- I can see that as clear as daylight- and so do I. That's all that means anything here, Zahir. Nobody else has a right to dictate what we do or don't do together."

Simultaneously wishing to tell her not to cry and yearning to yell at her not to tempt him with her feminine wiles, Zahir clenched his fists. More than anything, he wanted to feed her pieces of his Midwinter bun and allow her to offer him the same service, but he also had no desire to betray his tribe, and, if he did what he longed to do, he would be turning his back on his people.

Loving Cait was something he couldn't control, and so he wasn't responsible for that. However, he could certainly govern how he acted upon his overwhelming attraction to her, and so it would be inexcusable if he permitted himself to treat her as anything more than a friend. After all, acting as though he were courting her would be betraying both her and his tribe.

Yet, if he persisted in only treating her as a friend, he would be betraying himself and her, because not only would he be turning his back on his love for her, but he would also be denying her love for him. The squeezing of his gut informed him that he couldn't do that, either.

Miserably musing that no matter what he did he would be betraying those he loved and ripping his poor conscience asunder, Zahir tugged off a piece of his bun. When her lips, which were softer than rose petals, touched the tips of his fingers, he almost convinced himself that he had conducted himself as appropriately as he could under the complicated circumstances. However, when she slipped a slice of her own pastry between his lips, he found that the treat abruptly tasted bittersweet, and he took that as an omen that any happiness he enjoyed with Cait would be mingled with sorrow. The taste of the forbidden to him would no longer be painfully luscious fruit but rather the biting, crisp cinnamon of a Midwinter bun.


	27. Chapter 27

As Different as Day and Night

"Come in." Joren's clear voice called indolently through his oak bedroom door, and Zahir rolled his eyes. Of course, his oldest friend among the northerners would be too lazy to rise to answer his door.

It was the afternoon after the day he had shared Midwinter buns with Cait, and he had just learned that Joren and Sir Paxton of Nond had returned to the palace for the winter, so he had decided to visit the boy who had been his best friend as a page.

As Zahir opened the door, Joren, who was sprawled on his bed, flipping idly through a book, threw down the tome and smiled in welcome. "Zahir, it's nice to see you again. Sir Paxton's constant company makes me long for yours. You aren't nearly as boring as he is."

"I'm flattered," commented Zahir dryly, seating himself in Joren's desk chair. "What was cooking along the border, anyway?"

"Not much. Just the usual handful of skirmishes to relieve the mind-crushing monotony of our days in the cold and the mud. Moreover, we had all the amenities of home, such as air that always smelled like feces, gravity, and luckily not contaminated water," Joren replied, shrugging. "If you want to hear about bad cooking, though, you'll have to speak to my knightmaster. He can't make an edible meal to save his life, and, trust me, after all these months, I know that for a fact."

"Squires are supposed to defend the honor of their knightmasters," a smirking Zahir reminded him. "I'm sure that you are intended to tell everyone who asks that Sir Paxton is a simply superb chef."

"I'll give that priceless information to anyone I wish poisoned," muttered Joren, and Zahir chortled.

Seeing his companion laughing, Joren started chuckling as well. For a moment, the room echoed with their laughter. Then, when the sounds of their amusement faded as abruptly as they had begun, Joren went on, "Anyhow, now that I'm back at the palace, I have a new scheme for dealing with the Lump."

"Really?" Zahir eyed Joren dubiously as though he had just admitted that he had always been a progressive at heart. "What is it?"

"I will approach the Lump, seeking forgiveness for all the calumnies I heaped against her in the past. I will assure her that my knightmaster sparked an incredible change in my formerly regrettably disagreeable character, and request a clean slate with her," answered Joren, his tone smug. "Then, I will behave with the utmost courtesy to our dear Lump, making kind remarks that she isn't as ugly as she might have been led to believe she is, and that, even though some would accuse her of bearing an uncanny resemblance to a cow, she would make a good wife for a giant like Raoul of Goldenlake, who eventually will have to stop sleeping with his soldiers long enough to bed a wife and produce an heir."

"Joren, you sweet-talker," snorted Zahir.

"Exactly." Earnestly, Joren's gaze locked on his. "I will use honey to convince her that she doesn't desire to risk what little beauty she possesses living the rough-and-tumble existence of a knight. After all, as my sister Muirne pointed out in a recent letter to me, nobody has ever attempted a more feminine style of dealing with the Lump. Perhaps that sweeter method will prove effective with the Lump, who is, in the final analysis, actually a female. If not, I shall just have to sting her when she least expects it, and make sure that the sting is so damaging that she will not continue down the path to knighthood. Well, isn't my plot simply genius?"

"It's simply stupid and symbolic of your struggle against reality," responded Zahir caustically.

"What do you mean by that?" Joren demanded sharply, his eyes narrowing menacingly.

"Exactly what I said—your plan is idiotic and suggests that you apparently aren't living in the same world everyone else is inhabiting," Zahir answered, folding his arms across his chest. "Everybody except you who is familiar with the Lump at all recognizes that she will not be forced to go home no matter what anyone does to try to persuade her to do so. Thus, everyone except you as figured out that they would be better off channeling their energy into other activities."

"Everybody except me has given up, you mean," spat Joren, his handsome face contorting so that now it was nothing more than an ugly red blob astonishingly reminiscent of a smashed tomato. "Well, you should be aware that the Stone Mountain family breaks before it yields."

"That's a ludicrous philosophy," Zahir retorted, shaking his head. "Those who break not only lose the battle but don't survive to fight another day, whereas those who yield survive and have the opportunity to fight another day."

"You have changed so much that I feel like I don't even know you anymore." As Joren gazed at Zahir as though the other boy were a complicated riddle he was struggling to work out the answer to, he continued in a startled tone, "I can't believe that you let your progressive knightmaster corrupt you so much, Zahir."

"Well, I can't fathom why you're calling me corrupt when you're the one plotting against a girl who has probably got enough problems without you setting out to ruin her life, so I guess that makes us equally bewildered," snapped Zahir. "Seriously, doesn't it say something rotten that after we've been apart for all these months instead of wanting to have fun together, you wish to conspire against someone else?"

"Conniving against the Lump used to be our idea of enjoying our time together," pointed out Joren acidly.

"That was when we were younger." Frustrated by his friend's thick-headedness, Zahir sighed. "Now we're supposed to display a tad more maturity, Joren. What would Sir Paxton think if he heard you scheming against the Lump like this? I'm pretty sure he'd offer you a lengthy lecture about chivalry."

"It doesn't matter what he thinks," remarked Joren in a bored voice, studying his fingers as if they were far more intriguing to him than the current conversation. "When it comes down to it, he doesn't have any real power over me."

"How can you talk like that?" Zahir gawked at Joren, shocked by this offhand dismissal of a knightmaster's authority. "I mean, I understand mouthing off and disobeying your knightmaster, because all squires are by nature impertinent and defiant creatures, but you have to admit that he does have authority over you. He's your knightmaster, for Mithros' sake, and that should matter to you."

"How much authority a knightmaster has over his squire depends very much on the personality of the knightmaster and the squire involved in the relationship." Joren shrugged. "Sir Paxton happens to be a very mild man, and that makes it easy for me to run over him. He is such a sensitive soul that he cannot even stomach scolding me since it might wound my tender feelings."

"Basically, he cares so much about not upsetting you that he just permits you to do whatever you want, even if that could result in tremendous damage to you and other people," concluded Zahir, surprised to discover that he actually experienced a surge of gratefulness that his own knightmaster didn't have a similar handicap. Not that he would ever reveal this to King Jonathan, but he was a better person now because the king had not hesitated to be stern with him. "He's not concerned enough with your welfare to discipline you."

"Freedom beats harangues any day of the year," Joren stated merrily. "You're just jealous because my knightmaster lets me do whatever I wish, and yours doesn't allow you the same liberty, which is ironic considering how much breath the average progressive wastes babbling on about the importance of an individual's right to choose."

"I can do whatever I want, too; it's just that there are consequences for my actions." Zahir scowled. "Besides, not all discipline involves reprimands. The king understands that a gentle word can sometimes be more effective at getting people to behave than a rod to the back."

"I don't believe you decide anything for yourself," declared Joren, his eyes contracting dangerously once more. "You've just been brainwashed so much by King Jonathan that you don't even see any longer how much your mind has been twisted by his influence on you."

"I'm not brainwashed," Zahir snarled, his cheeks flaming. "You're the one who steals every opinion you have from your father."

"If you're not brainwashed, why does the grapevine have it that you were snuggling up with a Rider whore of filthy, common blood yesterday?" pressed Joren, his hands balling into fists.

"Cait is many things, but a whore isn't one of them," Zahir ground out, clenching his jaw so tightly that it hurt. "If you accuse her of being one again, I'll ensure that your mouth won't feel like gossiping about anyone for a week."

"The girl is a commoner who has destroyed whatever good name she might otherwise have possessed by engaging in a military career," hissed Joren, his expression tautening so that he appeared almost cadaverous. "It is repugnant that you would consider sullying your blood by associating with such trash."

"Be honest," Zahir barked. "You don't mind that a noble is messing around with a commoner lass, since you northern nobles bed your maids whenever the whim strikes you. What worries you is that a Bazhir might actually sleep with a northern woman, and no Bazhir is worthy of the honor of bedding a northern girl no matter how lowly she is. A drop of common northern blood is more valuable than a barrel of highborn Bazhir blood in your perspective."

"That's not true," Joren protested, his face flushed. "If I were as prejudiced as you describe, I would never have been your best friend throughout page training, because I wouldn't want a member of an inferior race serving as a knight of the realm."

"Really, you must regard me as a member of an inferior race if you think I'll believe that argument," countered Zahir curtly, lifting his nose in the air. "Not even the greatest bigots in the land have a problem with us sand scuts spilling our blood for the Crown, because it is so much better that we die fighting for the Crown than battling against it. All us savages are good for is warfare, so we might as well be deployed to Tortall's benefit rather than its detriment, but we are definitely far too primitive to be permitted to intermarry with northerners."

"When we were training as pages, you were as obsessed with keeping your Bazhir bloodlines pure as I was with preventing northern lineages from being contaminated," Joren fired back. "In the past, you comprehended that if northern and Bazhir blood mixed, nothing but catastrophe would result."

"I was incorrect." Furiously, Zahir stuck out his chin. "Although I perceived myself as really clever, I didn't know anything significant."

"No," Joren corrected him crisply. "You were right, but the progressives in your life have slipped into your brain and managed to convince you that you were wrong, but you should understand, Zahir, that such beings are disingenuous. They rant until they are blue in the face about the marvels of ethnic diversity, but, truthfully, they want to wipe out differences by having everyone interbreed. If everybody is of mixed ancestry, we will all be the same, and the manifold ancient traditions that made each group unique will be exterminated in favor of a gigantic modern culture that has no history behind it. In the future, if the lying progressives have their way, everyone will be tan, instead of brown or white." Suddenly, he snatched hold of Zahir's hand, so that his pale fingers intertwined with Zahir's swarthy ones. "Look at us, Zahir. We are as different as day and night. Do you really desire to see both of us eliminated in favor of some murky twilight?"

"You're right that we are different as day and night." His blood drumming in his veins, Zahir yanked his hand away from Joren. "I am growing up while you are obviously a case of arrested development."

"No, you're giving up, and I'm refusing to surrender," snapped Joren. "That's precisely why my people have always been able to trample over yours."

Breathing heavily like an enraged camel, Zahir glared at Joren for a long moment. As he glowered at the boy who had been his closest companion as a page, he realized that from now on nothing would ever be the same between him and Joren. Something essential to their relationship had shattered during their heated exchange, and that crucial, unidentifiable element could never be repaired.

From now on, the pair of them might pass each other in teeming corridors, and they would nod, smile, shuffle their feet, and then hurry on in their separate directions. In the future, making small talk would be a challenge for them, and they would spend their stilted conversations with their palms pressed into their pockets the whole time, since they would both feel so out of place dealing with one another. Any time they met each other's eyes from now on, they would have the urge to avert their gaze, because both of them would be so embarrassed by how far they had drifted away from one another in such a short span of time.

Whenever they met, they would choke even as they strove to find the right words to bridge the gulf between them. In the future, where once they had laughed easily together, they would trade a few feeble jokes, and then they would have to resort to yattering on about the weather in half broken sentences that they would never be able to piece together again.

Their once living friendship would be stifled, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Where once they had been the same, they were as different as day and night now, and their relationship couldn't withstand that change.

"I'm going," Zahir announced abruptly, pushing himself to his feet and striding toward the door.

"Good," Joren observed icily as Zahir turned the knob. "Don't come back here until you've come to your senses and dumped that Rider slut."

"You must be envious because you couldn't pay anyone enough to sleep with you," Zahir shouted over his shoulder as he slammed the door in his wake.

Vaguely satisfied that he had at least gotten the last word in, he stormed down the hallway. Since he was in a foul temper and as such preferred to be alone, he scowled when he caught sight of a slender figure down the corridor. His glower only deepened as he approached and saw from the dark skin, black hair, and black eyes that the person was none other than Seaver of Tasride, whom Zahir had always despised for betraying his Bazhir ancestry.

Then, just as he was about to brush past Seaver, he had an epiphany. Suddenly, it hit him like a blow to the head that he was snubbing Seaver just because Seaver's parents had the temerity to engage in a romantic relationship with each other. In essence, he was insulting Seaver just because the other boy's parents had acted with one another as Zahir wished to with Cait. That was being hypocritical, and if there was one type of individual Zahir detested most it was hypocrites.

Thinking that he did not want to raise his self-loathing to never before seen levels, he said, "Seaver."

"What?" Halting, Seaver arched a wary eyebrow.

"I wanted to apologize for doing the best I could to make your life miserable," hedged Zahir, uncertain about how he could possibly atone for years of wrongdoing when that was abruptly all that he wished to do. "It wasn't fair of me to haze you so much just because you are half Bazhir."

"It wasn't just, but I understand why you did it," responded Seaver softly, his eyes as hard as obsidian. "You hated me because I was part northerner and part Bazhir. Northerners dislike me for the same reason. Both northerners and Bazhir get hostile when they encounter someone who is like them, but not one of them."

"I knew that northerners had to dislike you since your skin is too dark for their approval, so I should have been kinder to you, because I deal with the same prejudice," Zahir muttered, ashamed of how eager he had been to be guilty of the intolerance that he hated facing from northerners. The terrible thing about being a victim of injustice was that it caused you to lash out against others with the same bigotry as soon as you had the chance. "The northerners who despise the Bazhir would be proud of how I worked to destroy you instead of trying to help you."

"I can understand why you didn't wish to assist me," commented Seaver bluntly. "Truth be told, I never bothered with learning about the Bazhir side of me, and, so, in a sense, I betrayed my Bazhir ancestry."

"You're a Bazhir even if you don't acknowledge it, and, however much you conduct yourself like a northerner, many Tortallans still won't accept you," Zahir informed him.

"I'm aware of that." Seaver nodded seriously. "The reason that I never troubled with learning about my Bazhir past is not because I want to be loved by northerners, but rather because when my mother married my father it was only the intervention of King Jonathan—"

"Of the Voice," cut in Zahir. "He's the Voice when he is handling Bazhir affairs."

"Very well. It was only the intervention of the Voice that prevented my mother from being stoned," Seaver finished. "After that, she had little affection for her heritage, and she raised me like any other northern noble, even though she could have taken advantage of my father's death to inundate me with the Bazhir culture she was brought up in."

Realizing that if he was to be the future Voice of the Tribes, he would be the spiritual leader of all the Bazhir, even those who turned their backs on their heritage, Zahir murmured, "If you ever experience the desire to discover more about the Bazhir culture that half of you truly belongs to, you can come see me."

"To be honest, I appreciate your invitation, but I don't wish to learn more about my Bazhir heritage," answered Seaver, shaking his head. "I've seen enough Bazhir struggle to reconcile their culture with that of the northerners to want nothing to do with that sort of internal turmoil. I would prefer to just live as though I was a complete northerner. People who cast two shadows—one northerner and one Bazhir- are never happy, Zahir, and you should understand that since you cast two shadows yourself."

"No matter how much you deny it, you cast two shadows yourself, as well," Zahir pointed out, thinking that while he and Seaver might have shared the dark Bazhir coloring, they were as different as day and night. After all, Zahir would have died before he abandoned his Bazhir ancestry.

By way of a reply, Seaver merely shrugged, and, after that, neither of them had anything more to say to each other, so they both continued down the hallway in opposite directions. As he returned to his bedroom, Zahir frowned. It pierced his gut like a dagger to imagine that Seaver didn't wish to learn about the Bazhir. The Bazhir heritage was such a proud, honorable, and brave one that Seaver's mother should have taught her son about it. She should have told Seaver all the glorious stories that Bazhir parents had passed along to their offspring for generations, because then Seaver wouldn't be so quick to ignore the Bazhir half of him.

As Zahir collapsed upon his bed, he concluded dully that while Seaver might have looked like a Bazhir, the boy was a northerner at heart. That was a pity, especially because Joren's voice was now ringing inside Zahir's ears, repeating ad nauseam, _Look at us, Zahir. We are as different as day and night. Do you really desire to see both of us eliminated in favor of some murky twilight?_

Longing to smash in his skull to silence Joren's voice but knowing such an endeavor was doomed to failure, Zahir despondently wondered whether if he had children with Cait they would all end up like Seaver.

The blackening of the gray winter sky, which had been the color of old oatmeal all day, alerted him to the fact that it was time for the nightly communion with the Voice. Knocking down the defenses that typically encircled his mind, Zahir released his anguish and bafflement into the ocean of emotion that had to be swamping the Voice now.

Soothing tendrils massaged at his brain, and Zahir calmed down enough to remember that he was close enough to the Voice to seek the man's guidance face-to-face. Uncertain whether his knightmaster would really be able to hear him when so many Bazhir were speaking in the king's head at once, he asked, _May I speak to you sometime soon?_

_Come join me on the Needle now, Squire. _King Jonathan's clear command made it plain that he had understood Zahir's request perfectly.

"He would be on the Needle in the middle of the winter," grumbled Zahir, putting on his boots and wrapping himself in his cloak. "Obviously, it's no concern of his that with wind chill it will be about twenty degrees colder one hundred feet in the air than it is on the ground. He must have lava instead of blood flowing in his veins."

Unfortunately, Zahir reminded himself, complaining would not be of any profit to him, so he bullied himself into leaving his room and walking down the stairwells and corridors until he arrived in the courtyard before the entrance to Balor's Needle, the tallest tower of the Royal Palace.

There were two ways to climb the Needle. One was an iron outer stair, which spiraled around the tower on the perimeter with no walls to protect the climber and was the route suicides chose. The other stairwell, built on the inside, was the twin of the one outside except that it wound in the opposite direction, because that balanced magical forces, something that mattered a great deal to the mages who scryed on the Needle.

This second staircase was the one that Zahir picked to ascend. Going up the steps, which were surprisingly steep considering the ornamental flowers wrought into them, took longer than he had anticipated, and so he was relieved when he walked through open doors and onto a stone platform at the top of the tower.

It was entirely dark outside now, and as Zahir approached the waist-high railing where the king was standing, he found that his breath was stolen from his lungs in a whoosh. Below him, Corus was a mass of glowing ambers. Most of the lights down there belonged to houses where families ate supper, laughing and teasing as they discussed their days. From above, he thought that everything appeared so simple, and it was easy to forget the limitations, jealousies, disappointments, and outrages of everyday existence. Up here, he could forget his troubles for a moment and feel as detached as any god.

"I've never been up here before, sire," whispered Zahir. "Pages aren't allowed to come here, because one boy jumped off the Needle after he failed the big examinations. I say if they are so anxious to keep future knights alive, they shouldn't put us through the Ordeal. Far more would-be knights have been killed by the Chamber than by the Needle."

"I can tell by your awed tone that you enjoy it up here," remarked his knightmaster. "People either love or hate being here. Personally, I find it peaceful here, but I can't get my wife to join me up here for love or money."

"It's probably difficult to convince a queen to do anything for money," Zahir muttered, noting inwardly that a woman who already had access to all the riches in the realm wasn't very likely to be susceptible to bribery. This reminder of the whole country truly being owned by the monarchy prompted him to tilt his head up toward King Jonathan and ask, "How does it feel, Your Majesty, to glance down from here and know that everything you see is yours?"

"I don't climb all the way up here to remind myself of my own sovereignty, Zahir." The king chuckled quietly. "One of the reasons why I enjoy it here is that it is something of a retreat to just stand here and admire the view, so thinking that everything below me is mine would, for the most part be an unwelcome intrusion. However, to answer your question, I would say that when the idea occurs to me, I feel pride in how beautiful the country is and a responsibility to make it an even better place for future generations."

"Do you come up here often during the communion with the Voice, sire?" Zahir wanted to know.

"Yes, I climb up here quite often for the communion with the Voice when I am at the Royal Palace not only because being here fills me with the serenity I prefer to enter the rite with, but also because the Needle makes magical communication across large distances less challenging," explained King Jonathan. "At this height, we are clear of all magical residues from the palace and from Corus, and so it is easier to speak magically to others who are very far away."

As Zahir nodded thoughtfully, absorbing all this information, his knightmaster went on briskly, "Now that we've discussed why I'm up here, perhaps you should tell me why you are here."

"I'm up here because you ordered me to come here, Your Majesty," mumbled Zahir, staring down at his feet, abashed now that the moment of actually seeking advice had arrived.

"Indeed, and I commanded you to come here since you wished to speak with me," the king pointed out sardonically. "That, of course, brings us back to the question you were so reluctant to answer last time."

"It was a suggestion, not a question, sire," Zahir muttered defensively. Then, fires igniting in his cheeks, which he elected to blame on the wind that he could abruptly feel whipping at his cloak and hair, he struggled to find a way to articulate the topic he wished to breach with his knightmaster, because while it was easy to be crude with Joren, talking about sex in any meaningful fashion was always difficult. In the end, he settled on, "I want to ask about what happens when two people love each other very much."

"In other words, you want to talk about sex." As he established as much, King Jonathan conjured a ball of azure light, which tinged both their expressions blue.

Wishing that the king hadn't created light, because he didn't want his knightmaster to be able to read his features, Zahir choked out, "I don't need advice on the mechanics of it, since I heard enough about that in the pages' wing to last me a lifetime—"

"Pages are, of course, the most accurate source of information about such issues," King Jonathan commented.

Ignoring the interruption, Zahir continued, "What I want to know from you, Your Majesty, is more delicate and more specific. I need to know whether I could ever marry a common northerner girl."

"I sense that this conversation is going to be a difficult one, and, therefore, I'm already wishing that you had come to me for guidance on the more mechanical aspects of sex." Steepling his fingers, the king sighed. "As you might already be aware, Squire, Bazhir law permits men to wed outside of the tribes, although women are forbidden from doing the same. Legally, then, you are allowed to marry whoever you wish. Unfortunately, however, when you marry, since you are a chief, you have to concern yourself with more than just the law. To be frank, that means that for the benefit of your people, you should take advantage of the opportunity to forge an alliance with another tribe through marrying a chief's daughter. The fact that you will be the future Voice only renders it more critical that you have a solid political marriage."

"Since you are the one who always advocates integrating the Bazhir into the rest of Tortall, I hoped you might find it good if a Bazhir chief wed a northerner girl, sire," stated Zahir bitterly, recognizing that as yet another false hope that would be brutally crushed by the harsh decrees of fate.

"If the girl you were speaking of was of noble blood, I would be happy to see new bonds developing between the Bazhir and the northerners," his knightmaster responded grimly. "Sadly, you are talking about a commoner girl, and if a Bazhir chief marries a commoner, it looks as though Bazhir blood is inferior to northern blood, which completely undermines the respect for Bazhir headsman that I was striving to create in northern nobles when I ennobled the Bazhir chiefs when I took the throne. If you and the daughter of a northern noble wished to wed, I would applaud."

"That will never happen, Your Majesty," asserted Zahir, gritting his teeth. "The conservative nobles would never desire to contaminate their bloodlines by allowing a sand scut into their family trees, as that would surely lower the quality of any future timber. As for the progressives, they are just as prejudiced although they try to pretend they aren't by finding one or two Bazhir that they can be friends with because those particular Bazhir aren't like the rest of the evil, primitive Bazhir. When all the progressives are convinced that all Bazhir men beat their wives and children, they would never allow their beloved daughters to wed into such an oppressive people."

"Zahir, any northern woman who married you would have to surrender a lot." King Jonathan's cerulean eyes lanced into him. "As the future Voice, you would need a wife who was willing to abide by Bazhir customs such as wearing a veil, not touching any man outside of her family in public, and confining herself to the female portion of tents. When people from different cultures wed, one individual always ends up sacrificing more, and, for your marriage to work, it would need to be your wife who gave up more for you. It would require a tremendous amount of love for a northern woman to wed you knowing that, and it would demand still more love for her not to come to resent you for the restrictions placed upon her as the years of your marriage go by. That's why it would be simpler and more prudent for you to wed the daughter of a Bazhir chief raised to adhere to the traditions of the tribes."

"You said with a strong enough love it was possible for me to marry Cait," declared Zahir rebelliously, sticking out his chin. "I love her because she comforts and challenges me in a manner that nobody ever has before, and it's not fair that we don't even have the chance to discover whether we could function as a couple, sire."

"The only justice in the world is that life isn't fair for any of us, Squire," the king educated him grimly. "You may think that my advice to you is cruel, but I'm only telling you to consider the same things I worried about when I arranged marriages for my own children."

"Well, Your Majesty, maybe I want to show the Bazhir that sometimes it is wise to be selfish, since nobody else can be expected to make you happy, and if your marriage isn't about the fulfillment of you and your partner, there is something very unbalanced about that equation." Zahir's jaw clenched mutinously. "After all, it is your marriage, not the marriage of your family or your tribe."

"If you are a leader, you are expected to put your people's interests above your personal desires," his knightmaster reminded him. "That means that even something as personal as your marriage needs to be conducted with the concerns of your people in mind."

"Oh, it's so easy for you to say," exploded Zahir, angry tears blurring his vision. "Everything lands neatly on a platter for you. You fall in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, and she also falls head over heels for you, which means you don't have to really fear being rejected. Of course, she also happens to be a princess, so there is nothing to prohibit you from wedding her, which means that you don't have any conflict between the needs of your country and the desires of your heart. You are allowed to marry for love because fate made it convenient for you, but then you stand around criticizing people who fall in love in a way that doesn't coincidentally work politically when it's already hard enough for those individuals without you making life more complicated for them. Since you got a fairy tale ending, you think it's easy for everyone to live happily ever after, but it's not."

"My romantic past is not on trial here, Zahir, and you would do well to recall that," King Jonathan warned. "Anyway, even if you and Cait cannot marry each other, there are still ways for you to be together for some time—"

"I wouldn't insult Cait by engaging in a relationship with her if I didn't believe that I could wed her, sire." Stoutly, Zahir crossed his arms. "If she is decent enough for me to mess around with her, then she is good enough for me to marry her. I would never do anything with a girl if I wasn't free to do the right thing by her if she wished me to."

"If you are worried about pregnancy, there are charms that remove that risk," commented the king softly.

"Fornication is still a sin even if there is no proof, Your Majesty." Zahir laughed, although there was no humor behind the grating, resentful sound. "All the progressives talk as though the anti-pregnancy charms are so wonderful because they supposedly liberate women, although a clever being can see that it is mostly the men who are freed of the ramifications of sleeping with girls. Nobody ever mentions that girls are better protected when bedding someone is seen as sacred, not as some foolish little sport. Everyone thinks that it is magnificent that, with the charm, sex has no consequences, but I know that sex without consequences is meaningless, and I want nothing to do with it." Taking a deep breath, he concluded, "I'll continue my relationship with Cait, and deal with the consequences."

"I don't understand why you bothered asking for my advice if you are just going to ignore my guidance, Squire," his knightmaster observed tartly.

"Perhaps I just wished to see if I was strong enough to handle the problems of loving her, because I'm smart enough to recognize that there will be many of those." Not comprehending his own motives for most of his actions, Zahir shrugged.

There was silence for a moment that seemed to contain an eternity. Then, biting his lip, Zahir asked, "Are you disappointed in me, sire?"

"Infuriating would be an understatement in terms of what your stubbornness is, Zahir ibn Alhaz," King Jonathan said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "However, I will never be disappointed in you for doing what you believe to be the right thing, even if your definition of right is very different from mine."

"As long as you aren't disappointed, Your Majesty, I don't care how infuriated you are by my obstinacy." Exhaling his relief, Zahir beamed his contentment, not caring how much his remark aggravated his knightmaster.


	28. Chapter 28

Tortured, Tangled Hearts

"Zahir!" The king's incisive tone started Zahir out of the haze of a wistful reverie about seeing Cait. "There are precious few certainties in the universe, but one of them is that you will not find the answer to my question by staring blankly out the window."

"We've been training for an hour," muttered Zahir mutinously, focusing his gaze on the dark, mist-coated window in his bedroom once again. "I'm exhausted, sire."

Zahir justified this last sentence by assuring himself that it wasn't, technically, a lie. After all, he was tired, although the true reason that he wished his lesson with King Jonathan would conclude sooner rather than later was so that he could visit Cait and hammer out some of the myriad problems they would have to contend with if they continued with their relationship, something that he had already decided that they would do if he could have his way.

"What we are doing here is important, Squire," his knightmaster announced, eyes stern. "However, I will compromise with you. If you answer three questions in a row right, we'll end tonight's instruction."

"What happens if I get a question wrong?" demanded Zahir warily. He hated having to struggle to articulate answers he already knew to questions, since it was comparable to explaining how he knew that it was raining when he was trapped in the middle of a monsoon, but receiving questions he didn't have an answer to was even worse, and somehow, he suspected that the king would be firing those at him just to extend the lesson indefinitely.

"Then I will correct you, and we will begin our count again," King Jonathan replied firmly. "We will carry on this lesson until you answer three questions in a row right. Perhaps that will motivate you to concentrate."

"Your Majesty is cruel," grumbled Zahir.

"I am only as cruel as it is necessary for me to be, and I wouldn't have to be harsh now if you would only pay attention," his knightmaster countered in a vexingly unflappable fashion. "Now, can you tell me what selfishness is defined by the Bazhir as?"

Well aware that any child who had grown beyond the teething stage would know the correct response to that inquiry, Zahir wondered what snare the king was laying out for him, and, narrowing his eyes, he asked, "Is that a trick question, Your Majesty?"

After all, he had a stringent policy about not answering those, which was intended to drastically reduce the number of times he made laughingstock of himself.

"At the present, young one, I am asking the questions, not you," King Jonathan reminded him, arching an eyebrow. "I would like an answer now, please."

Scowling, Zahir commented carefully, "It appears from the context of scriptural statements that selfishness represents the evil tendency in humans to follow their lust for power, wealth, or sex among other things at the expense of others and at a cost to their own soul, sire."

"Yes, indeed; very good, Squire," the king agreed solemnly. "Now, why don't you explain what the right way is?"

"The right way is the path which leads toward the gods, Your Majesty." Seeing that his knightmaster wasn't satisfied with this, Zahir bit his lip, rifling through the scripture passages he had memorized until he uncovered one that related to the topic, which was very fortunate, because the Voice could hardly argue that scripture was wrong. "It is a direction or a frame of mind that causes an individual to carry out such actions as described when Mithros says, 'Have We not given him two eyes and a tongue and two lips and shown him the two highways? Yet he did not attempt to ascend the steep uphill path. And do you know what the steep uphill path is? It is the freeing of a human being from bondage or the feeding upon a day of hunger of an orphaned relation, or of a needy person in misery; then, that he become of those who believe and counsel each other to be steadfast and counsel each other with compassion. Those are the people of the right way.'"

"You have a fine memory for verses, Zahir," King Jonathan remarked. "Perhaps you could now provide an interpretation of what you just quoted."

"I'll do so as long we both understand that request counts as your third question, sire," declared Zahir, folding his arms across his chest.

"Fair enough," his knightmaster conceded, offering a wan smile. "Go on with your interpretation, Squire."

"What is important in the description I just quoted is that the right way is an uphill path, not an easy one," Zahir hedged, twisting his fingers. "The specific actions mentioned, Your Majesty, are related to the welfare of humans in society, and all the deeds are done by people who, relative to others, cannot be described as self-centered. In that case, the implication is that the opposite way is a downhill way—an easy path—trodden by selfish individuals who have minimal concern for others. To follow the right way requires the expenditure of the moral effort of resisting selfish urges, because to pursue one's selfish desires is to go astray, and to go astray is a choice."

Experiencing a sudden surge of wrath as he recalled his father's lectures, he burst out, "You know, sire, my father used to claim that religion was easy. He always insisted that fools only disliked religion because it had too many rules that people in their rebelliousness and pride didn't wish to adhere to, but that what religion demands of you is a lot simpler than what your own selfish desires require of you. He said that being a glutton was actually hard work, since you always felt sick after eating. He told me that drinking was difficult because it made you pass out, that lust was a merciless master since it kept you awake in the night, and greed was just as pitiless an overlord because it wouldn't ever let you be satisfied with what you possessed. The problem is that he never mentioned how impossible it was to break the hold your own selfish desires have upon you even if you realize that they are making you miserable."

"Do you feel that your selfish desires have too powerful a grip upon you?" asked the king, his tone gentle.

"Everyone's selfish desires have too strong a clutch upon them, Your Majesty," snapped Zahir. "This world wouldn't be such a wretched place if that weren't the case. Still, I'm not stupid. I can figure out from your pointed questions that you believe I am too much in the thrall of my own selfish desires. "

"Why would I think that, Zahir?" King Jonathan wanted to know, raising his eyebrows.

"You imagine that I lust after Cait, sire." His vision tinged crimson by fury, Zahir glowered. He honestly loved Cait. There was no other explanation for the fire that raged in his bloodstream whenever he so much as thought about her. There was no other reason for the shock that always coursed through him whenever he so much as brushed fingertips with her. There was no other explanation for his desire to spill out his whole soul to her and his simultaneous struggles to construct coherent sentences. There was no other reason why he was convinced that he could fly whenever she was beside him, even though his feet seemed to be built from lead. There was no other explanation for the fact that he both wanted to get as close to her as possible and flee from her as quickly as possible whenever he caught sight of her. "You are convinced that it is lust that makes me want to be with her when it would be better for my tribe if I wasn't. You believe that I just use the term love so I don't have to acknowledge my own horniness, but you don't understand that if Cait and I lusted after each other we would have already leapt upon one another like jackrabbits in spring. Not that it is any of your business, but, for the record, Cait and I haven't even kissed on the lips, and, whatever that is, it isn't lust. No matter what anyone thinks on the contrary, I love Cait, and I hope she loves me. Love isn't a sin even though some hard-hearted people like to pretend it is."

"To be honest, Squire, one could accuse you of protesting too much," pointed out his knightmaster in a soft voice.

"Defending myself against your accusations, Your Majesty, doesn't mean that I'm protesting too much, just as proclaiming my innocence doesn't make me guilty." As Zahir's teeth gritted, his hands clenched into fists.

"I could argue that you perceiving accusations that do not exist from me is a sign of paranoia created by guilt," the king informed him dryly.

"They do exist." Trembling with rage, Zahir lifted his knees up to his chest and rested his head upon them in a comforting pose he hadn't assumed since he was a little boy, because that was what his great love reduced him to. "I am not paranoid, and you are just heartless, sire."

"Zahir, I am only ever cruel to be kind." Tilting Zahir's chin upward, so that their eyes met, King Jonathan went on smoothly, "Furthermore, all I am asking of you is to think about what you are doing."

"I'm in love with Cait," Zahir muttered, defiantly yanking his chin out of his knightmaster's grasp. "Oddly enough, I wasn't aware that love was such a cerebral activity, Your Majesty."

"In this matter, your insolence just proves your ignorance." Lightly, the king rapped his knuckles against Zahir's forehead. "Love involves far more parts of the anatomy than just the heart, and one of those other parts of the body happens to be the head."

"The heart is the most important part of love, sire," Zahir persisted, ignoring the treacherous flush that seeped across his cheeks.

"The young woman truly has you head over heels for her." Sighing, King Jonathan shook his head. "I want you to keep in mind, Squire, that doing the right thing isn't always easy."

"I agree." Zahir's jaw tightened. "Doing the right thing is staying with Cait, and that isn't easy."

"That isn't what I meant, and you know it." After swatting Zahir's knee, the king walked out of the room, calling back over his shoulder, "I feel that I've harassed you enough for one lesson."

As soon as his knightmaster left, Zahir was overwhelmed by a compulsion to visit Cait immediately, because seeing her would be all he required to assure himself that he was right, and King Jonathan was wrong. Imagining how much strength a mere crooked grin from her would flood him with, he swiftly donned his cloak and hurried outside, where he crossed the snowy palace grounds to the Rider barracks.

After taking a moment to remember exactly which window belonged to Cait's dormitory, since it would be immensely unfortunate if he threw a stone at the wrong one, Zahir tossed a pebble at the glass. A second later, a faint tinkling sound reached his ears as the stone made contact with its target. The next instant, a voice he would recognize over the clangor of any battlefield as belonging to Cait shouted down to him, "I'll be there in a moment, Zahir."

At the sound of her speaking, Zahir felt more alive than he would have envisioned it was possible to be before he had met her. That was all he needed to know that he would willingly pay a price far beyond rubies and tears just so that she never ceased talking to him.

As Cait climbed as gracefully as a cat onto her windowsill, which had ice crystals hanging off it like stalactites, her most bellicose roommate snarled after her, "Don't forget to shut the window behind you. I don't want to wake up as an icicle."

"Doubtlessly, that would improve you, though, Sheridan," retorted Cait, as she leapt onto a nearby tree and slammed the window shut. Then, Zahir watched as she descended, her sinuous movements as she traveled from snow-covered branch to snow-covered branch reminding him of just why witnessing a woman dance was sufficient to lead some males into sin.

When she hopped off the final limb, she greeted him with a smirk that he could discern clearly even in the blackness of the wintry night enshrouding them. "Yet again, you forgot to serenade me. It's getting hard for me not to hold your refusal to regale me with sweet music against you."

"Among my tribe, music is regarded as sinful," Zahir told her, taking her hand and guiding her toward the palace gardens. As his palm wrapped around hers, he discovered that his flesh tingled in delightful torment wherever it touched hers. Running his fingers along her hand, he uncovered not only the calluses from horseback riding and fighting, but also tender areas, and he smiled. Somehow he had known that he would feel a peculiar but perfect combination of softness and strength when he held her hand. "I don't know any love songs to assault your eardrums with, I'm afraid."

"Then I'll just have to teach you one from my homeland by the sea." Playfully, Cait leaned her head against his chest. As he breathed in the faint scent of lilacs that arose from her hair and commanded himself to remember that wonderful aroma whenever life hurled another unpleasant thing at him, he wondered if she could hear his heart banging against his rib cage. After all, since he could clearly make it out over the blood rushing inside his head, it seemed impossible that she would not be able to do so.

A second later, his mind was dragged away from such petty concerns as she started to sing. Even though he recognized that her voice would be too husky for most people's approval, he couldn't help finding her impromptu singing more attractive than a well-rehearsed cantata from a choir. He might not have been from the coastal region, but he could still appreciate the soulful melancholy of lost love that had been poured into the work, and he could admire that in the highs and lows of the song. As it bore him up and down with its ebbs and flows as though he were riding on an ocean current, dragging him from the fathoms of despair to the towering crests of achievement, and then tumbling down again in a hoop that seemed to last forever, he listened, spellbound, to Cait's song.

When it drew to a conclusion, he found that he was breathless, so he was fortunate when Cait spoke, although shivers shot down his spine when the words penetrated him like a dagger to the heart. "Zahir, I—I'm sorry that I urged you to share food with me yesterday."

"Why are you apologizing?" Zahir asked, his overworked heart abruptly stopping mid-beat and his stomach folding in on itself in a manner that assured him he would never be able to eat again. "Do you not care for me?"

Maybe he thought, feeling that a hollow cavern now existed where his heart had pounded a minute that now seemed like an eternity ago, her tragic song about lost love had been intended to prepare him for the blow she was about to deliver. Perhaps sharing her Midwinter bun with him had meant nothing to her, although sharing his with her had meant everything to him. If that was the case, he told himself dully, he would walk away from her without arguing even if it was the hardest thing that he ever had to do, because that would be what she wanted, and, no matter what, he still wished to abide by her desires.

"Do I not care for you?" Cait offered a shrill, strangled giggle. "Of course I do. I love you more than I should, meaning that I love you so much that it tears my soul apart."

"I love you, too," Zahir said desperately, twirling her around to face him, so she could comprehend just how earnest he was. "Where is the problem in that?"

"The problem is that we can't be together." Despairingly, Cait wrenched her hand away from his and yanked at her hair. "Yesterday night, Aisha told me what I knew all along and just couldn't accept. She said that I couldn't have a future with you, because you had to marry for the benefit of your tribe—"

"Aisha is a hypocrite to tell you that when she is swapping saliva Keir," spat Zahir. "Bazhir men are permitted to marry outside the tribes, but a Bazhir woman who does that gets stoned unless the Voice feels like intervening to save her hide, and the Voice isn't half as accepting of interracial marriages as you might believe."

"Don't be cross at your sister," Cait whispered.

"You know Aisha is my sister?" Temporarily distracted, a flabbergasted Zahir gaped down at Cait.

"She told me that she was your sister last night when she spoke with me, but I guessed earlier," Cait educated him shakily. "Keir might have been jealous of the bond between you, but I always suspected that it was the purest type of love—the kind that exists between siblings—and not of a romantic nature. It turns out that I was right, and now you need to be aware that your sister only wants to protect you from harm just like you wished to shield her when you agreed to act as though she wasn't your sister, thus freeing her of any connection to any of the tribes and making it so she was no longer bound by Bazhir law. She knows that you aren't liberated in the same way that she is."

"I'm perfectly free," growled Zahir, knowing that his words were a half truth that amounted to a full lie. "For Mithros' sake, I'm a chief, which means I'm nobody's slave."

"Aisha explained how you and I could never be together, and she pointed out that, while she was the type of person who could handle a relationship where ultimately there could be no chance of a long-term commitment, you were different," Cait continued, ignoring his outburst. "Unlike her, she said that you craved stability and that being with someone who you could not wed would destroy you. After all, you'd see being with a girl that you couldn't marry as a terrible dishonor, and living like that would cause you to consume yourself in an inferno of self-loathing. She's right, and I love you far too much to be such a catalyst of devastation in your life. Even though it will rip my heart into a million pieces, I love you enough to let you go. Precisely because I love you, I refuse to permit the love that should be your salvation to be your damnation, and I won't allow the love that should be the best thing in you be transformed into the worst thing about you." She paused to angrily swipe a tear from her eyes, and then finished, "Love is different from possession. I love you, Zahir ibn Alhaz, and that will have to be enough for me. After all, many people never get the opportunity to love with the intensity that I have, and so I shouldn't complain."

"It doesn't have to be like that, Cait," Zahir protested fervently.

"Yes, it does," insisted Cait, her lower lip quivering in a fashion that made Zahir long to howl at the moon like a wolf. "You need to marry to secure a solid alliance for your tribe."

"There are other methods besides marriage by which to forge alliances between tribes, and, once everyone knows that I'm to be the next Voice, I'll have more friends than enemies among the Bazhir," Zahir argued urgently. "Anyway, I won't wed some other girl when my heart belongs to you, because I would have betrayed her before I even completed my vows to her, and that would not be fair to her. Besides, even if I did marry a girl I knew that I couldn't love, it wouldn't benefit my tribe much, since her father would be insulted if I couldn't feel an appropriate affection for the daughter he entrusted to me."

"When you are the Voice, you will need a traditional Bazhir wife, and I don't think I can be that for you," murmured Cait, gazing at him with tears sparkling like diamonds in her eyes.

"Queen Thayet isn't a traditional Bazhir wife, and she's married to the Voice." Zahir's chin stuck out resolutely. "The current Voice chose me to be his successor because I had connections with both northern and Bazhir culture, so he has no right to complain about which customs I steal from what world, especially when the custom in question is one that he follows himself."

"I'm certain King Jonathan picked you because you are more of a Bazhir than he is, which would appease the many traditionalists among the Bazhir." Chewing her lip, Cait exhaled gustily. "If you marry me, that ruins some of what he hoped to achieve by appointing you his successor, since many Bazhir won't be happy if you wed me. They have to understand that royalty will marry royalty, but they don't have accept that a Bazhir chief will marry a common northern girl, especially one as unconventional as me."

"I don't care if it makes the king and the Bazhir spit fire!" Zahir exclaimed vehemently. "Cait, all my life I've tried to be all things to all people. Just this once, I want to be true to myself, and just be Zahir ibn Alhaz, not the chief, not the king's squire, not the Voice's successor, and not the son of a chief—just me."

Before Cait could reply, he pulled her against him, as though that alone would be enough to prevent her from leaving him, and stated baldly, "I love you, and I need you. Since I'm not skilled at poetry or anything, I can't tell you in a more beautiful fashion than that, but that doesn't mean I care about you any less. The mere thought of you no longer being a part of my life makes my lungs stop working, causes my stomach curl in upon itself, and turns my heart into a hollow cave. In many ways, I don't really have a place I can call my own, since I don't feel entirely comfortable here in the north or in the desert, but when I am with you, a part of me is at home, anyway. You can comfort and challenge me at the same time, and I need you around me to make me the person I should be. Losing you, Cait, will destroy me far more than being with you will."

"I'm not going to give into this," mumbled Cait, and he felt her spine become rigid against him.

"You know you want to," he breathed into her ear.

"From the moment I laid eyes on you, Zahir, I desired you, because you were so proud that you refused to be ashamed of who you were when Brayden made nasty comments about your ancestry, you were so skilled with the horses, and the fact that you were handsome didn't hurt, either," Cait admitted. "Then, as I got to know you better, I fell in love with you, since you had so many contradictory facets. There were times when you were so passionate, and other moments when you could be astonishingly cold. Sometimes you could be so stubborn, and other times you would just surrender to tradition because it was custom without a fight. You could be so prideful, but you also had much less of a concern with your individuality than I did about mine. In short, you were and still are an enigma to me. I love you, because I feel like I simultaneously know you and don't know you at all."

"One day, I want you to know me completely," Zahir told her in a rougher tone than he had intended. "We were drawn to one another for a reason. Why should we deny it anymore just because tradition says that we can't be together? Life is too short for that sort of nonsense, Cait. Our time alive is too scant to squander on customs that don't in some fashion enrich us or our loved ones, and it's too short by far to let traditions dictate whom those loved ones are." When she remained quiet, he stroked her hair and added, "Love always finds a way. We'll be able to overcome any obstacles, since it is not in either of our natures to surrender."

"Hopefully, that won't be what pulls us apart in the end," remarked Cait, kissing him on the cheek. "Oh, I can't resist myself and you. Since you are so determined, I will agree to continue our doomed love affair, but you'll have to be one explain to Aisha that you are the one breaking your own heart."

"I'm not accountable to Aisha, and neither are you," Zahir pronounced curtly. Then, because he was tired of conversation, he tilted Cait's face up, and, before any part of him could halt himself, he kissed her.

When their lips met, he understood in the best, most magical way possible, that she was not only as vital to his survival as the air he breathed, but that she was also a component of him, and she would continue to be with him forever no matter what transpired. Judging by the fact that she didn't twist away from him or stiffen in his arms when he kissed her, Cait experienced a similar sensation.

Tenderness flowered into passion as the two of them discovered the ages-old tonic for all the manifold horrors of the world, and the truth that was always known but always hidden: that the past was frozen, the future was unformed, and, for everybody, eternity existed in each heartbeat.

Zahir had no idea how long the kiss lasted, because he was curiously located outside of time when his lips were locked with Cait's, but, however much time it took, the kiss didn't last long enough, for it was interrupted by a rustling noise from the bushes behind them.

"See you soon," Cait murmured, darting back toward the Rider barracks, as Zahir poked through the bushes to discover who had been spying on them.

To his utter shock when he pushed back the snow laden, prickly branches, he saw eight-year-old Princess Vania, her silk nightgown dirty and torn, crouching behind the shrubbery.

"What are you doing out here at this time of night?" he demanded before he remembered that even the most insane members of royalty deserved to be addressed with more respect.

"The same thing you are," Vania educated him matter-of-factly through a yawn. "Just like you, I'm giving the middle finger to the whole world."

"A princess shouldn't be so impolite." Reproachfully, Zahir shook his head.

"There are a thousand things that a princess must do, and a million things that she must not even consider doing," commented Vania, wiping a strand of her waist-length black hair away from her face and fixing wide hazel eyes upon Zahir as she yawned again. "Everyone's expectations crush me, and I can't sleep at night, so I sneak out here."

"It's too cold for you to spend the night out here," Zahir told her.

"It's not the least bit chilly out here," Vania argued, shuddering and yawning at the same time.

Recognizing that only defeat could be the outcome of debating with a child of King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, since obstinacy was plainly a hereditary disease, he switched tactics. "You must be tired, Your Highness, and, surely, your bed is more comfortable than the ground under a bush."

"I'm not sleepy in the slightest," Vania declared, but the words had barely left her lips when her eyes closed, and her head fell limply against her shoulder.

"Blast," Zahir griped under his breath. Part of him was very discomfited by the prospect of scooping up a girl and carrying her back to her bedchamber, where she belonged, because he didn't want to compromise her modesty by touching her. On the other hand, chivalry demanded that he not leave an eight-year-old girl outside alone on a winter's night, so, reminding himself that Vania's safety was the highest priority and only a pervert would see anything sexual in his act of charity, he lifted her up into his arms.

As he carried her back to the palace and up to the royal quarters, Zahir grumbled inwardly that whatever the monarchs paid Vania's nursemaid, it was too much. He was just telling himself how deeply unfair it was that he was doing a nursemaid's work when he arrived in the royal quarters to find it in chaos, as servants rummaged under furniture.

However, he barely had time to process this before a plump elderly woman, who was presumably Vania's nursemaid, rushed over to him, snatched his bundle out of his arms, and screamed, "Princess Vania!"

No doubt awakened by the woman's shout, Princess Vania opened her eyes and squirmed out of her nursemaid's grasp with a disgruntled, "I'm not a baby anymore, Nurse. You don't have to carry me around. I can walk all by myself like a big girl."

"Since, in your own words, you are a big girl, I suppose you will be taking full responsibility for the mayhem that has engulfed these rooms for the past fifteen minutes as everyone searched frantically for you, Vania," observed Queen Thayet frigidly, as she and her husband approached.

"Mama," gasped Vania, pivoting. Realizing that neither of her parents looked particularly overjoyed with her, she ducked her dark head and curtsied. "Papa. How good to see you both. "

By this point, Zahir had determined that this scene had nothing to do with him. He was about to slink off before he was noticed when the king's eyes focused on him. "Thank you for bringing Vania back, Zahir. I'm sure she is grateful to you, as well."

"I'm not thankful to him for carrying me back here when I could have returned here by myself if I wanted to do so." Vania pouted, and Zahir had to stifle the laugh that bubbled inside his throat, since he didn't think his knightmaster would appreciate his amusement at the princess' cheekiness.

"You never should have left your bedroom in the first place," scolded Queen Thayet, and Zahir longed to edge away, but once he had been acknowledged, he didn't dare to depart without a dismissal, so he decided that his best bet was to act like he didn't exist until the whole issue had blown over. "You nearly gave your nursemaid a heart attack when she woke to use the chamber pot and found you gone. As for your father and I, we were very worried, because we had no notion what had happened to our youngest child. Until you have babies of your own, you cannot even begin to imagine the anxiety you caused us tonight, Vania."

"You and Papa needn't have fretted," Vania answered, her chin jutting out. "Once Nurse starts snoring loudly enough to awaken dogs in Scanra, I sneak out all the time, and no harm has befallen me so far."

"By admitting that you sneak out on a regular basis, you are hurting, not helping, your case," King Jonathan pointed out frostily.

"I'm going to be a Rider soon." Vania scowled. "You and Mama can't keep me locked up in the nursery forever."

"Young lady, you are not a Rider yet, and you would do well to remember that," her mother chided. "As a consequence for tonight's escapade, you won't be riding your pony for three days. If we catch you doing something like this again, it will be a week without your pony."

"That's not fair," objected Vania wildly.

"It's perfectly just," her father responded sharply. "Now say good night, and go back to bed."

For a tense moment during which Zahir couldn't breathe, Vania remained motionless, her eyes warring with the king's. Finally, she sighed huffily, but her sulkiness faded somewhat when she hugged her parents before her nursemaid escorted her back to her room.

"Starting with morning sickness, the joys of parenting are infinite," noted the queen wryly, and, again, Zahir wished fervidly that he was somewhere else.

"You can't complain too much, my dear, when Vania's brand of stubbornness is yours, not mine," replied King Jonathan, and Zahir rolled his eyes, thinking that it would be just like the sovereigns of Tortall to argue over which type of stubbornness their children had inherited.

"You only make that ridiculous claim because she has my eyes, not yours." Queen Thayet waved a dismissive hand as she walked away. "Buri has some important reports she wants to go over with me, so I don't wish to keep her waiting any longer."

Once Queen Thayet disappeared, King Jonathan arched an eyebrow at Zahir. "Squire, although I am grateful to you for finding Vania, I would like to know what you were doing roaming around the palace grounds so late, anyway."

"If you really must know, I was talking to Cait, sire," answered Zahir, sounding more defensive than he had intended. "There's nothing wrong with that, since I don't have a curfew."

"Cait has a curfew, and now you do, too," the king announced grimly. "I want you back here before the eleventh bell chimes every evening."

"That's not fair." Zahir shook his head rebelliously, not caring if he was echoing the earlier words of a sullen eight-year-old.

"Since you are apparently too immature to comprehend why I want you to return here by eleven every night, perhaps I will have to change your curfew to ten," King Jonathan countered tersely.

"I understand why you want me back by eleven every night, Your Majesty." Zahir narrowed his eyes. "You aren't worried about me getting attacked or going out to taverns. What you are concerned about is me spending too much time with Cait. A curfew isn't about keeping me safe; it's about controlling me."

"No matter what you believe of me, Zahir, I will continue to protect you, even if that sometimes means keeping you safe from yourself." The king's keen eyes lanced into him. "Rest assured that I will find the time in my busy schedule to check that you are back by eleven, and, if you are not, you won't be permitted out at night for a week."

"I hate being the squire of such a cruel man," Zahir muttered resentfully, already knowing that he would be back by eleven each night, because staying out late was not worth an entire week without talking to Cait, and the only time he could really meet with her was in the evenings, which his knightmaster would probably be jamming with instruction now.

"As I told you earlier, Squire, I am only ever cruel in order to be kind." His knightmaster's hands closed around his shoulders.

"That's what my father sometimes said when he was about to beat me, you know." Feeling suffocated by King Jonathan's grip, Zahir tugged himself free of the man's clasp. "It's never about hurting someone, is it, Your Majesty? No, it's always about teaching somebody a lesson or saving a person from themselves. At least, those are the excuses that are offered, but the truth is probably much uglier than that. The truth is most likely more about power than protection. You don't go around thrashing people, but that's just because you have more subtle and more effective means of keeping others in line."

"You would do well to reflect on the fact that this country would be in shambles if I did not," snapped King Jonathan, and Zahir couldn't help but cringing, because he had never heard his knightmaster address him so icily before. "Go to bed now before my gratitude to you for finding my daughter disappears entirely. As you go to sleep, remember that my primary concern when I deal with you is shaping a worthy successor as a Voice, not in guaranteeing your personal happiness in life. I will not permit anyone, even you, to ruin the destiny I have planned for you."

Noting mutinously that, of course, his knightmaster would only be focused upon using him, Zahir bowed stiffly and stalked off to his bedroom. As he slammed his door shut behind him, he wondered why he had ever respected the king when the man only wanted to bleed others dry, and, therefore, was incapable of understanding love. After all, anyone who could comprehend love would never have attempted to drive him away from Cait. Earlier that night, his knightmaster may have accused him of being selfish, but, as far as he could discern, King Jonathan was the self-centered one who could only see people in terms of what political advantages they provided.


	29. Chapter 29

Author's Note: I don't really like this chapter very much, but it is (in my opinion) necessary, and so, hopefully, you guys will find something redeemable in it. Also, I will warn everyone that Jonathan isn't very nice in this chapter again, but he and Zahir will reach an understanding in the next chapter, I promise.

Stars

"Nothing beats a cold, clear winter's night for stargazing," remarked Cait, her tone reverent. She, Zahir, Aisha, and Keir were all stretched out upon the warm, pungent hay on the second floor of the Riders' stable, staring out the window at the constellations in the velvet black sky.

"When I was little, I used to look out the window long after I should have been asleep, and try to count the stars," Keir commented, and Zahir determinedly kept his eyes riveted on the stars, not sparing so much as glance upon Keir, because he understood that he would see Keir's arm snaked around Aisha's shoulders, and Aisha's head resting against Keir's chest. If he caught a glimpse of that, he would either throw up his supper or strangle Keir. Possibly, he would even do both, so, in this matter, he decided that it was best not to tempt fate. After all, Keir and Aisha seemed to love each other, and he didn't truly wish to be the person who killed them for that, especially when he was guilty of loving Cait. "I always fell asleep before I could finish, though. Some children drift into dreamland by counting sheep, but I fell asleep by numbering the stars."

"I used to sneak out of my house on nights when I couldn't sleep and go down to the tide pools by the sea," murmured Cait, laying her head upon Zahir's chest. Swallowing the lump that constricted his throat every time Cait physically displayed any affection for him, Zahir knew that her hair was the only blanket he would ever need. The warmest wool was cold compared to her locks, and the smoothest silk was rough compared to the soft strands of her hair. "I would always try to catch the stars reflected in the water, as though they were shellfish I could capture with my hands, but I never could grab hold of one to bring home in my pocket."

"It's just as well that you didn't," Aisha said. "Stars can't shine through cloth, you know. I discovered that when I was a child. When I was young, I was scared of the dark, so I would always attempt to locate the pinpricks of light that were the stars in the sky above my family's tent, but I never could see them through the fabric. Every night, when I couldn't spot the light, I started to cry. Since I didn't wish for anyone to catch me when I was so weak, I would muffle my sobs into my blankets, but, somehow, even though nobody else heard me, my brother always sensed that I was upset. He would creep through the tent, not waking up my sister or my parents. Then he would lay down on the ground beside my sleep mat and hold my hand until I fell asleep. Every morning, when I woke up, he would be back on his side of the tent—"

"I would be back in my sleep mat because I never was on the woman's side of the tent, and you dreamed the whole thing, Aisha," blustered Zahir, who remembered all too well how his sister's sweaty palm had clutched his, as if she had imagined that he could protect her from all the invisible monsters that lurked in the darkness. He recalled how she trusted him enough to drift off to sleep, and how she had curled up in a ball, her lips drawn into a faint, tranquil smile as she forgot about the terrors of the night at last. He would never forget just how beautiful and vulnerable she had looked when she was asleep. Now, he could only wish that he could always shield her from real monsters as well as he had from fake ones, but that was impossible when she made a career of chasing after beasts. He still loved Aisha, but he could no longer protect her, and that bitter realization tore at him.

"You are Aisha's brother?" demanded Keir, gawking at first Zahir and then Aisha.

"Of course I am Aisha's brother," Zahir replied loftily. "Cousins don't share so many of the same gestures, and don't have the same spirit, but siblings do."

"You and Aisha could have shared that important information earlier," muttered Keir, but, even in the scant illumination provided by the constellations and moon, Zahir could see much of the tension lining the other boy's face relax. Keir, he understood, had poured a tremendous amount of energy into preventing Aisha and Zahir from becoming a couple. Now, Keir recognized suddenly that all that effort had been wasted on an unnecessary battle against an imaginary foe that he had created for himself across the field, and he could finally lower his defenses at long last.

"Really, Keir, you should be thanking me for not killing you as recompense for dishonoring my sister," Zahir countered.

"I can defend my own honor," Aisha observed dryly. "Besides, Keir hasn't dishonored me yet."

"That's a matter of opinion," snorted Zahir.

"Unfortunately for you, though, it's my opinion, not yours, that makes a difference," Aisha retorted.

"My opinion is significant," Zahir volleyed back. "After all, it's necessary for my honor that I protect yours."

"Men always sound so egotistical when they talk about their honor," put in Cait, rolling her eyes.

"Women always sound so dramatic when they complain about men," Zahir riposted, as the bell rang out the eleventh hour across the Royal Palace grounds. For a second, he started at the noise. Once he had met up with his friends, he had lost track of the time, forgetting just how late it was getting.

He knew that he should jump to his feet and race back to his bedroom before the king noticed that he was out past his curfew. However, he didn't feel like doing such a thing. Tonight was his first night as a squire with a real curfew, so he strongly suspected that his knightmaster would be checking his room at exactly the moment the bell tolled the eleventh hour. That meant that if he was going to break his curfew, he might as well do it for as long as he could. Maybe he had never truly intended to abide by the stupid curfew, anyway. Perhaps he had never really planned on submitting himself to what he perceived as a real injustice.

Either way, he wasn't about to flee to his bedroom. No, he was going to continue to sprawl on the hay with his arm around Cait, so that he could stroke her silken hair with his fingers and drink in the lilac scent of her skin. Gods, he thought, it wasn't like he was asking for that much. All he desired was the opportunity to love in peace.

"If women are dramatic, it is only because men don't pay attention otherwise," scolded Cait, gently slapping Zahir's arm. "Anyway, before you can ruin this night by challenging Keir to a duel or something, I think I should remind you that what you are supposed to do when you stargaze is exchange stories, not quarrel."

"If you want to tell stories, you'll have to come up with one then," mumbled Zahir, leaning his lips against her ear, so that his breath tickled her skin.

"Fine, but if you insist, don't expect me to be creative," Cait replied. Then, pointing up at the nighttime sky, she indicated two constellations that, at least to Zahir's smitten mind, resembled a pair of lovers wrapped in an eternal embrace. "Where I am from, we call those two constellations Carwyn and Maris, and we have a special myth that explains how they came to be. Once upon a time, many centuries ago, Carwyn and Maris were humans like all of us. Both of them were the children of rival warlords on an island that has since been conquered by the Emerald Ocean. Each of them were raised with the belief that members of the enemy clan were cannibals who ate babies for fun, but, when they met one day in the woods, they fell in love with one another before they could discover each other's surnames. By the time that they learned each other's identity, both of them knew that they would die if they tried to live without one another. Together, they disappeared into the forest together. However, when Carwyn's clan discovered that she had disappeared, they marched off to accuse Maris' tribe of kidnapping her. Halfway to their destination, Carwyn's clan met Maris', who demanded that Carwyn's clan return Maris just as Carwyn's shouted for her return. The two warlords refused to return a person that they hadn't kidnapped, and each warlord believed that the other was lying. In a rage at the insult to their honor and in a fury to regain their offspring, the warlords ordered their men to join battle. Watching from behind the giant oak trees, Carwyn and Maris were filled with horror. Screaming for their fathers to stop, they darted out from behind the trees, but their pleas to end the violence were drowned in a sea of battle cries. When the two armies collided, Carwyn and Maris were each slain by their own tribesmen, and, only after the bloody battle drew to a close at sunset did the warlords learn the terrible truth of what had happened. When the warlords uncovered the fate of their precious children, instead of trying to make peace between themselves, they blamed each other, and the fighting between their clans only worsened. Carwyn and Maris were each buried separately, but the gods took pity upon the two young lovers and raised their spirits up to be constellations in the sky, where they could always be together, because even though their bodies could die, their love couldn't."

"Your people could have come up with less depressing stories to tell when they gazed up at the stars," remarked Aisha, as Zahir, staring up at the stars, wondered if all the stars finally tumbled down to the earth in brilliant streaks of orange, would anyone be able to count them in the chaos that ensued, and if the joy of numbering them at last would be worth the price of a fiery destruction.

"Tell me about it," Zahir agreed, shoving himself to his feet abruptly. "Why is love forever punished with the death penalty, and what makes anyone believe that the gods would show mercy in a story when they never do in real life?"

Before any of his companions could attempt a reply, he hurried over to the ladder. As he climbed down it, he called, "I'm going to bed. It's way past my curfew."

Still irritated by Cait's story, he stalked across the grounds to the palace and returned to the royal apartments. In the middle of reaching out his hand to open the door to his bedroom, he froze when he heard an icy voice state, "How lovely that you have finally deigned to return, Zahir."

Pivoting, he saw that the door to King Jonathan's study was open, and that his frowning knightmaster was undeniably the one who had addressed him. With a scowl, Zahir noted inwardly that he wasn't in the mood for a confrontation with the hard-headed and hard-hearted king.

When Zahir didn't respond, King Jonathan commanded, "Come here, Squire. I want to talk to you."

Thinking mutinously that his knightmaster might wish to speak with him, but he didn't desire to talk to the king, Zahir obeyed, although he wisely left a chair and a desk between himself and King Jonathan. When dealing with angry authority figures, he was convinced that it was prudent to create as much of an obstacle course between him and them as possible.

"Where have you been?" King Jonathan inquired in a frigid voice.

"Out, sire," Zahir ground out, deciding that he would be as unresponsive and unhelpful as possible.

"Indeed. That much is obvious." The king's eyes swept coolly over him. "Do you happen to know what time it is, Zahir ibn Alhaz?"

"Not exactly, Your Majesty," Zahir answered flatly.

"Very well, then. Are you aware of whether the bell has rung for the eleventh hour yet?" his knightmaster pressed, arching an eyebrow.

"I am, it has, and none of that matters, sire," snarled Zahir, his temper flaring.

"I'm afraid all of this does matter," King Jonathan snapped. "Just yesterday evening, I ordered you to be back in your room every night before the eleventh hour. The very evening after I issue such a command, you ignore it, which makes me suspect that I haven't disciplined you as harshly as I should have in the past, Squire."

"Trying to prevent me from seeing Cait when I did nothing wrong seems like pretty severe discipline to me, Your Majesty," scoffed Zahir.

"If you were willing to treat the girl as just a friend or to engage in a brief affair with her, I wouldn't have a problem with you seeing her." As he established as much, the king's hands squeezed the sides of his chair so tightly that his knuckles suddenly appeared to have been replaced by pearls. "It's your delusion that you can marry her that forces me to restrict you from seeing the lass."

"Basically, my crime isn't in liking her—it's in loving her, sire," concluded Zahir, his saliva transforming into vinegar. "Yesterday, you accused me of lusting after her, but if I really did lust after her, that wouldn't be a problem at all, because, according to you, I can mess around with her all I want. Being with her would only be bad if I actually tried to make it mean something. Apparently, the world has turned upside down without my noticing it, because wrong is now right, and right is now wrong."

"Right and wrong are far more complicated than you are currently portraying them as." His azure eyes blazing like the deadliest part of a flame, King Jonathan rose and folded his arms across his chest. "I have the welfare of an entire country to consider, Zahir ibn Alhaz, which means that, in my perspective, anything that benefits my realm is good, and anything that injures it is evil. I have decided that you are the best candidate to be my successor as Voice, but the Bazhir will never accept you as their spiritual leader if they feel that you have assimilated too many northern values. It was enough of a struggle to get the Bazhir to submit to me as their leader that I will not risk them splintering away from this country again because they feel too dominated by northern society, and they will feel that way if you wed a northern girl who isn't even a noble instead of one of the daughter of their chiefs."

"I didn't ask to be the next Voice any more than I requested to be your squire," protested Zahir vehemently, tears of outrage welling in his eyes. "It's not fair that my whole life is going to be dictated by the fact that I'm something I had no choice in being."

"I didn't ask to be king, either." Brusquely, King Jonathan overrode his squire's objection. "However, that doesn't mean that I can just surrender my responsibilities and become a peasant because I think being a farmer would be a less stressful life. When the gods had you born the son of a chief, they provided you with many blessings, but the gods expect much from those they bestow much upon. "

"Why do the gods demand devotion and sacrifice from me when they don't show me the way?" Zahir burst out, allowing all of his exasperation and wrath to spill off his tongue. "Anyway, sire, you are such an advocate of freedom, so why am I not allowed to have any of your precious liberties?"

"I am for freedom, not for anarchy, Squire," his knightmaster informed him sternly. "Whether or not you agree with me, you must obey me. Since you didn't abide by the curfew I established for you, you won't be allowed out at night for a week, and you will be writing a formal apology to me for blatantly defying me the evening after I set your curfew."

"I don't blindly obey unjust rules, Your Majesty, and I'm not sorry for that." Obstinately, Zahir lifted his chin in the air. "I will not apologize for something I'm not sorry about."

"You will not be visiting any of your friends until I have a sincere apology from you," the king educated him tersely, stepping closer to him. "Pride and stubbornness will cost you much in this matter, Zahir."

"If I was able to disobey your curfew once, sire, then I can do it again," Zahir pointed out, his lip twisting contemptuously.

"This instant, you will start showing me the respect I deserve," warned King Jonathan, shaking Zahir's shoulders so forcefully that he felt his teeth rattle.

"I am showing you all the respect you deserve, Your Majesty." Zahir's eyes glittered with defiance. "After all, everyone knows that you would have married Alanna the Lioness if you could, and that is certainly not a solid political alliance, so you are a hypocrite for demanding more from me than you are willing to do yourself."

"As I told you before, Squire, my romantic past is not to be put on trial by you," the king admonished, vigorously shaking Zahir's shoulders again, and, this time, stars danced in Zahir's brain. "Now, in the future, you will obey my curfew without any argument."

"I will not," asserted Zahir heatedly, the stars sparking in his brain making it impossible for him to devise a cleverer retort.

Zahir half-anticipated a stinging slap across the face or a resounding box to the ears, and he had decided that he would not attempt to dodge a blow aimed at him. After all, he reasoned, he was strong enough not to give into a beating, and he was too proud to act intimidated by a strike to the cheek or a whack to the ears.

However, as prepared as he was for a physical attack, Zahir wasn't ready for the mental assault. By the time he recognized the tendrils of magic knocking at the fortress guarding his mind, the bastion had already capitulated to his knightmaster's invasion. Then, before he could truly process what was transpiring, his brain was shouting at him that he must obey the Voice, his mouth longed to move to agree to adhere to the curfew, and his knees buckled with a craving to kneel before his knightmaster in repentance for his insolence.

Locking his knees to prevent them from crumbling and covering his ears in a futile attempt to silence the screaming voices in his skull, Zahir bit his lips until the metallic taste of blood coated his tongue in order to keep from surrendering to the curfew. Desperately, he tried to push King Jonathan out of his mind, but he didn't have the power to resist both his cruel knightmaster and his traitorous body, which was determined to crush his soul.

As sweat dotted his forehead, vomit scorched up his throat, and constellations swam before his bulging eyes, he thought that he was like a shooting star. After all, like a shooting star, he was doomed to fall, but he was also going to make his downfall glorious, so that the universe would know exactly how much it lost when he was destroyed. Only when every last reserve inside of him had been depleted did he give up the struggle.

"Stop." Zahir hated how broken his tone sounded, but he hated his weak body even more when, as soon as he opened his mouth, vomit spewed out of it. Tears of shame clouding his sight, he choked out, "Haven't you hurt me enough, sire?"

"I didn't cause you any pain, Squire," responded King Jonathan softly, as the voices in Zahir's head finally ceased yelling at him and his body desisted in tormenting him. "It was your own defiance that made you sick. Perhaps that will teach you the value of obedience."

"You've proven that my own body will turn upon me if I disobey you, Your Majesty." Resentfully, Zahir bowed and headed toward the door before his knightmaster could stop him, because he at least wanted the satisfaction of dismissing himself and of having the last word, even if his pride had been shattered.

As he returned to his room and collapsed, as battered as a soldier who had barely survived a dreadful battle, Zahir thought that he had lost all respect for his knightmaster. Bitterly, he noted inwardly that the reason the Bazhir had defied northerners for centuries was because northerners had the tendency to trample over Bazhir dignity, and no Bazhir could tolerate being humiliated.


	30. Chapter 30

Violation and Reconciliation

That night, Zahir couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see constellations swimming in the black fathoms of his brain, and he could hear voices echoing hollowly in the cavern of his skull, calling out for him to surrender to his knightmaster's will.

The metallic taste of blood again flooded his mouth as he remembered how it felt to grind his teeth into his tongue to prevent it from betraying him, and he recalled how horrible it was to have a million voices screaming inside him and to be unable to shout out his anguish.

Once more, vomit scorched a passage up his throat, and, furiously, he shoved it back into his stomach. Throw up was proof of his own weakness, and he wouldn't humiliate himself by vomiting all over the floor yet again. Loathing for his own frail, traitorous body deluged him as he snatched up his wash basin and desperately attempted to purge all traces of vomit from his mouth. Unfortunately, the taint refused to be cleansed. For the rest of his life, he knew that he would associate helplessness and degradation with the acrid taste of vomit and blood mingling upon his tongue.

Then, even as he blinked rapidly to prevent them from spilling out, tears of shame leaked from his eyes and trailed down his cheeks, because he couldn't escape the awful recollection of being violated. Violated, he decided, hiding under blankets that he recognized would not be able to protect him from a terror that had already been inflicted upon him, was the perfect term for what had happened to him.

His brain had been invaded, every defense he had offered had been crushed, and his own mind had turned his body against him, so that, in the end, his battered self could do nothing but capitulate while his spirit gazed on in disgust. The king had betrayed him, and he had turned upon himself, so he could never again trust either himself or his knightmaster.

Curling his fingers around his quilt, Zahir discovered that the blood in his veins had been replaced with searing white wrath and agony. He had trusted the Voice, allowing the man access to his thoughts, emotions, hopes, and fears, just so that the Voice could use their bond against him. The cruel irony of that was enough to make him want to vomit one more time.

Of course, a scathing contingent inside his mind snarled at him that he shouldn't have been astonished by King Jonathan's betrayal. After all, if he had been smart, he would have noticed that the king had no qualms about manipulating the Bazhir by influencing their thoughts. If he had been clever, he never would have granted the Voice access to his mind after the king forced Mahmud's men not to resist him and after King Jonathan had tried to erase some of his grief over Nadir's death. The problem was that, in both situations, his knightmaster had been attempting to save Bazhir from pain, not push it upon them, and Zahir hadn't realized that the king would do such a thing.

That, he supposed, only made him more of an idiot. As he should have learned by now, trusting authority figures always resulted in him getting burned, so he should have been more careful. From now on, though, he would be. Nevermore would he have faith in any authority figure, and he certainly would no longer participate in any activity that might permit King Jonathan entrance into his mind.

If he wanted to ensure that the king couldn't slip into his brain without permission, he would have to empty it entirely of all emotion, Zahir reasoned as he stared bleakly out his window at the sun, which was now staining the sky tangerine and strawberry as it rose. He would have to become a shell. He would have to create a fortress around his brain that was so deep and mighty that the Voice would never be able to penetrate it. He would have to become a rock that felt no pain, and an island that never shed so much as a tear.

The morning sky was fading into its typical winter grayness when Zahir's endeavor to numb his mind was interrupted by a rap on his door, and he could tell from the knock that it was his knightmaster who wished to see him. Dispassionately observing how twisted it was that the king would ask for permission before entering his room but not do the same before violating the sanctuary of his mind, Zahir said flatly, "Come in."

Dressed as immaculately as ever in his favorite shade of blue, King Jonathan strode in and seated himself on the bed beside Zahir, whose jaw clenched, thinking that his knightmaster might have appeared charming and handsome on the outside, but he was rotten to the core on the inside. Now that he knew just how corrupt and vicious the king could be, Zahir wouldn't allow himself to be drawn in by the man's charisma only to be destroyed by his cruelty later on.

"You look like you didn't get any sleep last night," remarked King Jonathan, keen gaze fixing on the shadows Zahir could sense lurking under his eyes.

Strictly speaking, this statement did not demand a response, and so Zahir offered none.

"Please talk to me, Zahir," his knightmaster persisted.

Rebelliously, Zahir noted inwardly that he would not bother sharing his thoughts or feelings with someone who obviously placed such little value on their relationship that employing it as a weapon was acceptable. The wonderful thing about a betrayal was that once it occurred, there was little more to be said.

"Just as I was afraid of, you are going to be giving me the silent treatment, in that case," commented King Jonathan heavily. "Well, after what happened last night, I can't fault you for that. I only hope that, even if you won't talk to me, you'll at least do me the honor of listening to me."

Telling himself that he would not fall victim to any cunning emotional ploy, Zahir narrowed his eyes warily as the king continued in a grave tone, "Squire, I apologize for attacking you yesterday night. No matter how much our argument might have escalated the situation, all that you were truly guilty of was missing your curfew. That is a relatively minor offense, and it is completely unjust that you ended up bleeding and throwing up as a punishment for that. As your knightmaster, I should always be fair and in control when I discipline you, and last night I was neither. Apart from that, it was dreadfully wrong of me to utilize the sacred bond that links us together to wound you. I have never drawn on the powerful ties that bind a Bazhir to the Voice in order to injure a Bazhir before, and it makes me sick to think that I ended up doing that with you. What I did was every bit as abusive as anything your father ever did to you. I can only hope that one day you will find it in your heart to forgive and trust me again."

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," muttered Zahir.

"Healing takes time, I understand that, Zahir," his knightmaster responded gently. "The greatest tragedy is that you were finally recovering from the abuse you endured at the hands of your father when I attacked you."

"You don't understand, sire," pronounced Zahir dully. "Until you've been abused by someone you put your faith in, you can't even begin to understand how it ruins a large part of your soul every time that happens to you, and your comment demonstrates that fact quite clearly. Everyone who has never been abused talks about healing, but nobody who has been mistreated ever does. Why? Since anyone who has ever been abused knows that time doesn't heal those sort of wounds, and that the best you can hope for is a few disfiguring scars rather than a crippling injury. Everybody who has never suffered any real abuse wonders how someone could possibly forgive the one who mistreated them. However, those of us who have been abused realize that you forgive your abuser because if you don't you'll drown in your own hatred and resentment."

Taking advantage of the fact that the wrong-footed king seemed to have no notion how to reply to this outburst, Zahir went on tartly, "Anyway, Your Majesty, as we have just covered the great mystery of whether or not I will be able to forgive you, why don't you tell me if now is the moment that I'm supposed to apologize for my defiance and insolence yesterday, so that we can abandon any trace of realism and sob as we mutually forgive each other?"

"Squire, I don't expect you to apologize to me, nor do I wish for you to do so," King Jonathan informed him firmly. "An apology would imply that you believed you were responsible for what happened, and victims of abuse are never to blame—those who mistreat them are."

"It's not you; it's me, that's what you are telling me, but that's not true," snorted Zahir. "Obviously, there's something about me that makes people want to hurt me."

"I can only assume that your father abused you because that was the only way he knew how to discipline you." Sighing, King Jonathan shook his head. "As for me, I abused you out of my own weaknesses, as well. It's no excuse for what I did to you, Zahir ibn Alhaz, but, ever since my father died, I have placed a higher priority on being a good king than being a good person. I have dedicated everything I have to this realm, and sometimes I have even sacrificed my conscience because I believe that doing so will benefit my country. In the past, I've strained my relationships with family members and close friends because of that tendency, and it impacted our connection recently, Squire, since I expected you to be as unsparing of your personal relationships when the good of the realm requires you to be, and I was furious when you weren't. I couldn't let you do something that I felt undermined the secure future of the country, and your insistence on doing that sent me over the edge. In my mind, the argument was no longer about you missing curfew—it was about the future of the realm. As a result, I lost all sense of proportion and attacked you."

"You should lead by never surrendering your morals," stated Zahir sullenly, folding his arms across his chest. "If you don't set a good example, sire, who will?"

"Ever since I became king, I have believed that it is selfish to place my personal honor and relationships above the needs of my country," his knightmaster explained.

"How can you love the country like you claim if you don't love those closest to you?" Zahir frowned. "Love starts at home."

"Of course I love my family and my friends, just as I love you, Zahir." The king paused, and then went on, "I just cannot show that love at the expense of an entire realm."

"If you feel that way, then why are you apologizing to me, anyway, Your Majesty?" Zahir wanted to know, his forehead knotting.

"I'm apologizing because I'm not merely the king—I also am the Voice," King Jonathan told him quietly. "The bond that every Bazhir shares with the Voice is sacrosanct. It should be used for comfort, gentle guidance, and mild correction if necessary. It is certainly not to be drawn on to humiliate or force any Bazhir into submission. What I did to you was a violation of the holy pact that exists between the Voice and the rest of the Bazhir, and, as such, it was inexcusably wrong."

"I can't reconcile all the different sides of you, sire," exploded Zahir, his frustration mounting. "I don't know where the king in you ends, where the Voice begins, and where the man buried under all that is."

"Neither am I, just like you aren't sure where the Bazhir within you ends and the northerner begins," his knightmaster answered in a hushed tone. "The more roles that you are expected to play, the more difficult it is to fill each of them all the time."

"I can't trust you, Your Majesty, if I don't have any idea what role you'll be trying to fill at any given moment." As he established as much, Zahir shook his head.

"Whatever role I'm trying to fulfill, you have my word, Zahir, that I will never again abuse you like I did last night," the king replied somberly.

"You promised that you wouldn't go out of your way to hurt me, sire, and you lied about that," pointed out Zahir, biting the inside of his mouth to keep himself from crying, because he wasn't going to allow himself to be weak in front of his knightmaster again. "Why shouldn't you lie about this, too?"

"I didn't lie to you, because when I made that promise, I had every intention of maintaining it, rather than of deliberately deceiving you." King Jonathan hesitated for a long moment, and then admitted, "No matter how much I'd like to be, I am not perfect, and sometimes that causes me to break promises I plan on keeping. That's what happened last night. I gave into my dark side- my anger, my need to silence you, and my desire to stamp out the rebellion within you—and I ended up breaking my word to you."

"How do I know you won't do that again?" demanded Zahir, his throat constricting.

"Unfortunately, since you are dealing with a fallible being, you can't know anything like that," his knightmaster responded. "However, you could say that I have a personal incentive to never again attack you like I did yesterday night."

"Really, Your Majesty?" Dubiously, Zahir tilted his head.

"The bond between us flows both ways, Squire," the king said. "That means that when I was causing you pain, it was being reflected back into me through the connection between us, as it should have been, since it should hurt to create that much agony in someone else."

"You didn't end up vomiting, sire," mumbled Zahir, his chin lifting.

"No," King Jonathan agreed softly. "As you progress with your training, you will learn how to absorb but not surrender to assaults on your mind rather than to fight them. To overcome an attack on your mind, you need to bend like a willow instead of breaking like an oak. You vomited because you fought the assault, rather than absorbing it."

Shooting his knightmaster a wary glance, Zahir remarked, "I don't want to do any of that mental training, Your Majesty."

"I understand that." The king nodded. "One day, though, you will want to, and that time might not be nearly as far off as you imagine."

"What makes you say that, sire?" asked Zahir, who was irked by his knightmaster's presumption.

"You are one of the most resilient people that I have ever met, Zahir, and, believe me, I have encountered many resilient beings," King Jonathan murmured, steepling his fingers. "If you weren't so resilient, you never would have resisted my attack for so long."

"I didn't ask the gods to make me so stubborn," commented Zahir, biting his lip. "Mostly it just seems to bring me misery."

"The weak didn't request to be born that way anymore than a genius asked to be created smart and the village idiot requested to be made stupid. When it comes down to it, everyone feels a bit of hatred for the person that the gods made them." The king's gaze locked on Zahir. "However, if you weren't so strong, you would never be able to become the next Voice, since only someone with a considerable amount of stubbornness can retain some sense of self even when hundreds of Bazhir are communing with him, and a Voice must always maintain some sense of who exactly he is."

"It seems like the best way to retain my sense of identity is not to participate in any sort of mental communion with anyone," muttered Zahir.

Zahir wasn't certain what answer he had anticipated to this, but he had definitely not expected King Jonathan to ask, "Squire, have you heard of the glassblowers of the Yamani Islands?"

"Of course," Zahir replied, nonplussed. "It's said that they make the most beautiful glass in the known world."

"They do," confirmed the king. "The glass that they create is so thin, though, that their work is incredibly delicate. As a result, even when people are very careful with the glass, mistakes can happen, and it can shatter. Fortunately, the Yamani glassblowers have an even higher art than merely crafting lovely glass. That is, they can also remake broken glass. In that is their most sublime creation, since they can take the pieces of something gorgeous that had been smashed and rebuild it into something even more beautiful, because you would see the seams of the crack, but the glass would still be flawless, and, since it had been shattered once, it would become infinitely more valuable than before."

"You're asking me to trust you again." Zahir's eyes narrowed. "You think I can just will myself to believe in you again, when, in reality, trust only exists when you don't even have to remind yourself of your faith."

"I just want you to be open to the possibility of trusting me again, no matter how much you are hurting right now," King Jonathan told him gingerly. Then, removing from his pocket a stone with copper, crimson, and brown streaks running its length, he continued, "I found this rock many years ago when I was in the desert studying to be the Voice, and I would like you to have it."

Wondering resentfully whether his only reward for trusting King Jonathan earlier was to be a stupid rock, Zahir accepted the proffered stone. The instant his fingers closed around it, he felt a tinge of warmth, of serenity, and of homecoming trickle from the rock into his bloodstream. Unconsciously, he began to stroke the stone, taking solace in its smooth, predictable regularity. Here was a rock he could cling to and trust in the chaos of everyday life.

"It's warm," he whispered, astonished, before he could halt himself.

"Yes, it seems to contain more of the desert's wild magic than most stones that size. In fact, that was what first prompted me to notice the rock when I was taking a walk, feeling overtaxed by the burdens of training to be the next Voice and of being the Crown Prince. When I picked it up, I found that it calmed me a great deal." Nodding to the stone in Zahir's palm, the king continued softly, "Now I wish to pass it on to you, so you can always have tangible evidence that I care about you even if I sometimes do a fine job of acting as though I don't."

Proper etiquette, as Master Oakbridge would doubtlessly have screeched at him, demanded that Zahir thank his knightmaster for the rock, but Zahir wasn't about to do that. However much wild magic the stone possessed, it did not, in his opinion, compensate for the degradation and violation he had experienced last night.

Simply put, he wasn't ready to make nice or back down. He was as mad as a hornet now, because feeling outraged was preferable to feeling helpless. As long as he had his fury, he would still have some of his dignity. Anyway, being angry was better than being abused, and it was only fair that he had the opportunity to channel some of the helpless ire that had been broiling in his veins since yesterday night upon the knightmaster who had humiliated him and violated the sanctuary of his mind.

"I don't want your stupid stone, or anything else that belongs to you," he spat, hurling the rock across the room. Vindictively, Zahir thought that the king could experience the pain of offering something valuable only to have it be cruelly tossed back in his face. "I have honor, and I'm not able to be bought off with trinkets. Save your bribery for your covetous northern merchants and nobles. Maybe they don't mind being your victim if you throw a couple of baubles at them afterward, but I do."

"Zahir." Gently, King Jonathan grasped his shoulders. "I'm not trying to bribe you."

"Yes, you are," snapped Zahir, yanking out of his knightmaster's clasp. "Honestly, you believe that you can just torture me, and then apologize and give me a dumb little stone as a present, and everything will suddenly be as it was between us before you broke my trust and assaulted me. Mithros, the very idea would be hilarious if you weren't serious."

"How would you like me to demonstrate my seriousness, Squire?" The king arched an eyebrow. "I assure you that I have been nothing less than sincere in my efforts to be reconciled with you."

"You and I both realize that our argument last night wasn't about my missing curfew; it was about my being with Cait," Zahir rapped out. "If you wish me to believe that you actually care about me, sire, allow her the chance to prove that she can be a good wife to the future Voice."

"The Bazhir will never accept her as wife of the Voice," King Jonathan stated crisply. "It's time that you acknowledged that simple fact."

"You can't be positive that the Bazhir will not accept Cait," argued Zahir, sticking out his chin. "If she was able to change my mind, she might be able to alter theirs, as well."

"Yes, and one day trained sheep will teach advanced mathematics at the university," his knightmaster observed dryly. "As future Voice, your marriage prospects need to be much more substantial than that, I'm afraid."

"Well, I'm afraid that I won't believe you care about me at all unless you at least provide Cait with the opportunity to be accepted by the Bazhir." Gathering courage from the fact that, if the king had not been lying about torturing Zahir causing him pain, their bond flowed two ways, which meant that he could wield it as a weapon just like his knightmaster, Zahir crossed his arms over his chest.

"Very well, Squire," the king conceded tersely after a lengthy pause. "Even though I sense that it will cause you nothing but heartbreak, Cait will accompany us to the desert when we next make a progress down there, and she will have the chance to show herself as acceptable to the Bazhir."

"Thank you," Zahir mumbled, pondering whether his ears were functioning correctly or if his overactive imagination was at work once more.

"Once you witness the rejection Cait will encounter in the desert, you won't be thanking me," King Jonathan educated him grimly. "However, since you appear determined to ignore my guidance, I cannot spare you the pain of firsthand experience in this. Still, if Cait is to travel to the desert, you must understand that if the Bazhir deem her unacceptable, you will marry the daughter of a Bazhir chief without any complaint, so that the scandal of you wishing to wed a northern girl can quickly be buried in the sand."

"I'll agree to that." Zahir would accede to anything as long as it afforded Cait the opportunity to prove herself to the Bazhir. "That won't be necessary, though, because Cait and I will convince the Bazhir to see reason. After all, I'm learning all sorts of persuasive techniques from you, Your Majesty."

"I don't think that you should give me credit for your natural abilities." The king's white teeth flashed in a grin. "If stubbornness were enough to ensure happiness, you'd be guaranteed lifelong bliss. Now, I suggest that you try to recover some of that sleep you were deprived of last night."


	31. Chapter 31

Author's Note: In _Squire_, Shinkokami's words to Kel suggest that her uncle decided to marry her to Roald instead of a Yamani noble at the last minute, and so I chose to have the Tortallans not be certain yet who exactly Roald would wed.

Honor and Compromise

"Even though we don't know the name of the princess Roald will be marrying, since the woman he was previously betrothed to perished tragically in an earthquake, we must begin decorating quarters for her arrival," announced Queen Thayet at breakfast with the king, her son (who had arrived last night with Lord Imrah), and Lady Cythera of Naxen, as Zahir laid plates piled high with eggs, toast, ham, and sausages onto the table before them.

"It would be a terrible slight to the princess if we didn't have her chambers properly prepared for her," Lady Cythera agreed, neatly slicing her ham. Glancing sideways at Prince Roald, she added, "That's not the most auspicious start to a royal marriage."

"Exactly," remarked Queen Thayet crisply between nibbles of sausage. "Cythera, over the years, you have been a wonderful social secretary to me. My husband and I would like you to draw on the same skills you use as my social secretary to organize the decoration of the princess's quarters to the satisfaction of both ourselves and the princess."

"I'm honored to serve the Crown however I can, Your Majesty," Lady Cythera answered, bowing her ash-blonde head politely.

"Magnificent," commented King Jonathan, and Zahir, who was placing a pitcher of fruit juice on the table, noted inwardly that his knightmaster had adopted the tone that indicated the man was about to explain how exactly he expected a subject to carry out a task that had just been thrust upon them. With the king, there was no choice about what role you wished to play in the country. In fact, there wasn't even any personal decision involved in how you wanted to fill the part you had been assigned. Instead, there was only following orders and being used. Zahir had learned that the hard way. "We would, of course, wish for the princess to feel at home in what, to her, will seem like a strange land. Therefore, we would like the decoration of the room to be considerably influenced by Yamani styles, so that the princess understands that she is welcome in a country that respects her heritage."

As Zahir thought bitterly that the king would go out of his way to accommodate interracial marriages as long as it was politically advantageous to do so, Lady Cythera's blue eyes gleamed in a manner that suggested she was in her element as she replied quickly, "Then I should try to focus on balance and simplicity, the distinctive characteristics of Yamani decorations, when designing her rooms. I also should not shy away from using blacks and whites as colors for interior design. The princess will surely want silk carpets for visitors to kneel upon, and rice paper curtains to partition her rooms—"

"And low tables for serving tea to guests, because in the Yamani Islands, it is not customary to dine sitting in chairs," finished Queen Thayet, and Zahir felt a faint surge of satisfaction that at least one other race had realized the folly of cluttering places with useless furniture.

"If possible, I would like a statue of a waving cat to be placed somewhere in the princess's chambers," said Prince Roald quietly, and Zahir started. Although the heir to the throne might have been the shyest of Zahir's yearmates, when he did open his mouth, it was generally to establish something intelligent, and so it was rather astonishing to find him suddenly speaking in non sequiturs.

"A waving cat, Your Highness?" repeated Lady Cythera, her blue eyes widening in consternation, as Zahir pondered whether the stiff prince had been attempting to crack a joke.

"Yes, my lady." Prince Roald bobbed his head in affirmation, thereby eliminating the possibility that everyone in the room had misheard him. "If it isn't too much trouble, I would like a statue of a waving cat put in the princess's quarters. Keladry of Mindelan, who lived in the Yamani Islands throughout most of her childhood, explained to me that waving cats are symbols of good fortune there, and I want my wife to think our marriage will be lucky."

"That's a sweet gesture, Roald." Queen Thayet smiled at her son. "I'm certain that the princess will appreciate it."

"I will ensure that there is a statue of a waving cat in the princess's rooms as Your Highness wishes," stated Lady Cythera, sipping her juice.

"All of these ideas are excellent." As Zahir exchanged the platters of now cold eggs, meat, and toast with dishes loaded with pastries, the king inserted himself into the conversation again. "Still, we must not forget that, while the princess's chambers should have elements of Yamani design incorporated into them, they also must contain a fair number of Tortallan features. After all, we must make it clear that the princess will be expected to abide by our customs once she marries Roald. While we don't wish to offend her, we also must emphasize that Tortall is not an outpost of the Yamani Islands, but its own sovereign state to which she now owes her allegiance."

"Her walls can be decorated with Tortallan tapestries, Tortallan flowers can be placed throughout her quarters, and her linens can be of Tortallan make," Cythera suggested, and Zahir observed mentally that only among royalty would interior design be so political in nature. "Doing those things should make it clear that her rooms are in Tortall and have a Tortallan influence."

As King Jonathan, Queen Thayet, Prince Roald, and Lady Cythera finished the tarts and Zahir cleared the table, he couldn't help but feel somewhat inspired by what he had overheard. Even though it was nauseating how political every aspect of decorating the Yamani princess's quarters was, it was comforting to see that it was possible to both preserve honor and compromise in an interracial marriage. If Prince Roald and the unknown Yamani princess were capable of compromising when they hadn't even met one another and certainly had not been able to cultivate any degree of affection for each other, then Zahir and Cait, who loved each other, could definitely do the same. That probably was not the lesson he was supposed to learn from listening to his knightmaster's conversation, but that didn't matter to him. The true instruction, after all, was never what the teacher taught, but rather what the student learned.

Half an hour later, Zahir's mind was still spinning as it attempted to devise a compromise he could offer Cait that would somehow permit her to be everything she and the Bazhir wanted her to be, as he crossed the snowy palace grounds to the practice courts to arch with Aisha, Cait, and Keir. In fact, as Aisha and Cait engaged in a shooting competition, Zahir's concentration was so directed elsewhere that it took him a moment to realize that Keir, who was standing beside him, had addressed him.

"Pardon?" he said once he recognized that Keir had been talking to him.

"I—er—just begged your pardon myself for the bigoted remark I made about the Bazhir before you left for the desert," responded Keir, his face flushing with more than the just the chill of the winter air.

"No need to apologize." Zahir waved a dismissive hand. "Everyone has prejudices. Some people just aren't honest enough to admit that they have them."

"There is a need for me to say that I'm sorry," insisted Keir. "That comment about the Bazhir—it wasn't really me. I'm not intolerant of other ethnic groups or anything. It's just that I'm the seventh child and fourth son of simple farmers, and I'll never inherit anything when my father dies. Ever since I was little, I've known that I will have to make my own way in the world because my parents couldn't provide me with anything, and that has created a rather competitive streak to be born within me. That is why I was enflamed with jealousy whenever I saw how close you were to Aisha, and that is why I insulted your race—because I couldn't bear to lose her to you or anyone else. The envy and the competitiveness are me, but the prejudice isn't, although the jealousy and competitive spirit were enough to turn me into a temporary bigot, and I apologize for that."

"Consider it already forgiven," Zahir replied, thinking that he had suffered far worse injuries. "I've done far more terrible things myself."

"I do understand that I'm not truly worthy of the daughter and sister of a Bazhir chief," Keir continued, shooting a slanted glance at Zahir.

"Strictly speaking, Cait isn't fit for a Bazhir chief, either, so I would be a hypocrite if I condemned you and my sister for doing what I'm doing with Cait," Zahir grunted. "All I have ever wanted is for Aisha to be happy, and, if you can please her, I can stand the idea of the two of you being together. However, realize that if you ever hurt her, I will consider myself honor-bound to castrate and disembowel you."

Keir blanched, but before he could answer, Cait and Aisha had rejoined them, cutting off their exchange.

"What are you two gossiping about?" Aisha wanted to know, as she kissed Keir and, consequently, caused Zahir's blood to scald him as it pounded through his veins.

Thinking that he didn't want visual evidence of the affection between Aisha and Keir, Zahir stated tersely, "Only stupid, giggling girls gossip, Aisha."

"That's not true," scoffed Aisha, as Keir wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

"Oh, get a room," Zahir snapped, spinning so that his back was to the demonstrative couple.

"Do you really want us to do that, Zahir?" teased Aisha, her tone far too flippant, in his opinion, for the subject they were discussing.

"What crime did I commit that the gods deem it fit to punish me with an unchaste sister?" he huffed, refusing to face her. "It's impossible to protect your honor when you spend your life doing everything in your power to destroy it."

"Honor is overrated," countered Aisha, still all levity. "When you have it, all you can do with it is stand around and admire it as though it were some statue. I'd rather have fun than have honor."

"With the way you talk, one would never guess that you were raised among the Bazhir," snarled Zahir, rolling his eyes. "You disgust me."

"Oh, lighten up," Cait scolded gently, and, when she rested her head on his shoulder, he felt himself relaxing slightly. "If Aisha isn't concerned enough with honor, you are much too obsessed with it."

"You can't be too obsessed with honor, Cait," he argued. "That's impossible."

"Well, you valiantly do your best to prove that it is, in that case." Wrinkling her nose, Cait elbowed him in the ribs.

"When you are so abusive, I don't know why I bothered convincing King Jonathan to allow you to travel with us next time we go to the desert so you can show the Bazhir that you are worthy of being the future Voice's wife," mumbled Zahir. "At times like this, I don't think anyone loves me."

"You'd be easier to love if you weren't pricklier than a cactus," Cait muttered. "Anyway, when are we going to the desert, then?"

"Not for quite some time, I imagine." Zahir shrugged. "The king probably won't visit the desert again until the progress."

"I see." Nodding pensively, Cait inquired, "How did you persuade His Majesty to permit me to be introduced to the Bazhir at all? Didn't you say that he isn't exactly approving of our relationship?"

"You don't want to know how I managed to convince King Jonathan to allow you to meet the Bazhir. All that matters is that I did it in the end." As he remembered his knightmaster's cruelty, Zahir scowled. "The king doesn't approve of our relationship, yes, because he only likes interracial marriages when it is politically advantageous to do so. You see, in the eyes of my esteemed knightmaster, anything that is politically advantageous is good, and anything that is politically disadvantageous is evil. If you think that's a moral compass, you've swallowed too much of that moral relativism nonsense progresses are always spewing."

"Be careful." Cait placed a soothing hand upon his arm. "Sedition can get people beheaded."

"Only if they are more useful to the realm dead than alive," observed Zahir cynically. "As long as the king wants me to be his successor as Voice, I'm safe from execution if nothing else."

"Bitterness isn't attractive, Zahir," Cait informed him dryly, kissing his forehead.

"Nothing could make me less handsome," smirked Zahir. Before she could playfully dissuade him of this notion, he went on quietly, "Anyway, Cait, I've been thinking. Compromise is what makes any marriage, especially an interracial one, work. Maybe if you were willing to confirm on a surface level to some Bazhir customs, things would run far more smoothly when you are introduced to the Bazhir."

"It's funny you should say that," remarked Cait, biting her lip. "Lately, I've been asking myself how our relationship could ever work out in the future, and I think that I might very well be willing to undergo the ceremony to become a Bazhir. Obviously, since it's a choice that will have a massive impact on my life, I haven't completely decided yet, because I still want to learn more about the Bazhir before I make up my mind entirely, but you should be aware that I am seriously considering becoming a Bazhir for you."

"You know that the Bazhir don't permit women to be warriors, don't you?" Zahir asked, eyeing her dubiously. "You also recognize that you'd be expected to devote your life to being a wife and a mother, don't you? You understand that you'd have to wear a veil and confine yourself to certain portions of tents, too, right?"

"I've talked to Aisha, and so I comprehend all those things, yes," Cait educated him in a hushed voice. "As strange as it might sound, I think that I could live happily that way, Zahir. The reason that I trained as a Rider was because I wanted to do that, and now I want to be a Bazhir. My life goal was never to prove that women could be as good warriors as men; it was just to do what I wanted because I didn't wish to die feeling like I had never truly lived. I don't need to be a Rider to feel happy or fulfilled. After all, being a good wife and mother are two jobs that could keep any dozen people occupied. Besides, if I become a wife and mother after training to be a Rider, I'll have experienced more of life than I would if I had just become a Rider. "

"You'd be giving up a lot for me," whispered Zahir, not knowing whether his heart would break or burst from love of her.

"Rubbish." Again, Cait kissed his forehead. "I have already done more in my life than most people accomplish in a lifetime, and, since I love you, it won't be burden to be a wife to you and a mother to your children, as long as you always remember that I chose to be your wife and the mother of your children, and always respected me for that."

"I'll always love and respect you, Cait." Not caring that they were in public, Zahir locked his lips against hers passionately. A long moment later when he took a breath, he added, "No matter what most northerners believe, Bazhir don't see women as inferior. To the Bazhir, men and women are equal, but designed differently so that they could better fulfill their gods-specified roles."

"A theory that is hogwash," put in Aisha wryly. "My cooking could make a lizard gag and anything I sew is never recognizable as the object it was intended to be. As for feminine bashfulness and a nurturing nature, they are quite foreign to my disposition."

"That hardly indicates that the Bazhir theory is incorrect," Zahir blustered. "It just suggests that you are a freak of nature."

"If that's so, at least I'm a pretty freak of nature." Her eyes gleaming, Aisha laughed and tossed her black curtain of hair back haughtily. "Anyway, Zahir, you and Keir haven't shown us that you two even know how to pick up your bows. Why don't you shoot some arrows instead of shooting your mouth for a change?"

Rolling his eyes at his sister, Zahir stepped forward, nooked an arrow onto his bow, lifted his bow, aimed, and then fired the arrow, which landed solidly in the center of the target. With a satisfied snicker, he pivoted to face Aisha, who stuck her tongue out at him by way of a retort.

Perhaps the smugness of meeting his sister's challenge was what prompted him to knock on the king's study, and, when his knightmaster shouted at him to enter, declare without any preliminary, "Cait is open to the idea of becoming a Bazhir, sire, and, if she becomes a Bazhir, then the tribes will have to accept her."

"You mean the girl is willing to learn about being a Bazhir when you currently aren't willing to do the same?" King Jonathan's eyebrows rose.

Understanding that his knightmaster was referring to his present refusal to engage in any of the mental training required to be the next Voice, Zahir flushed defensively. "Maybe I just don't want to learn from you, Your Majesty. After all, you don't have a problem violating the sacred bond that ties the Voice to the Bazhir, so why should I trust you?"

"I initially told you to come in, Squire, because I wanted a distraction from a dispute with Tyran merchants, but, at this rate, it seems like the dispute with the Tyran merchants will be more pleasant to deal with than you." The king sighed as he lowered his quill. "To be honest, I had hoped that your resentment of me would lessen, rather than increase, over time."

"You attacked me, sire, and you can't expect me to forgive that in a heartbeat." Zahir glowered. "When you assaulted me, you showed me just how horrible you can be, and now I can't stop seeing the evil in you where once I might have only glimpsed the good."

"Zahir, the evil in me is the good in me," said King Jonathan softly, reaching out to clasp Zahir's shoulders gently. "Like everyone else, that which is best in me is also that which is worst in me. Our strengths are our weaknesses, and the closer you are to someone, the more you will understand that fact."

"Don't give me that moral relativist rot that progressives are so fond of." Furiously, Zahir gritted his teeth. "I have honor, and I know that good and evil are not the same thing."

Before the king, who had opened his mouth to speak, could speak a word, Zahir yanked himself out of his knightmaster's grasp, growling, "Let go of me, Your Majesty. If you think that a few gentle shoulder squeezes are enough to make me forget how you attacked me, you are delirious."

"I'm not trying to make you forget what happened, Squire," his knightmaster educated him quietly. "I just want you to associate me with something besides pain."

"That's a lovely theory, my liege, but, like so many concocted by progressives, it won't work in practice." With a derisive snort, Zahir shook his head. "Everyone who isn't a masochist recoils instinctively from pain. When you have been abused and somebody who has hurt you before reaches out to touch you, there is always a voice inside you that says they are reaching out to injure you, and, even if they don't immediately, a part of you is wondering the whole time if the touch is going to become violent or painful."

"Naturally, Zahir, I disagree with you about how many progressive ideas work in practice, but, if my touching you causes you distress, I will refrain from doing so." Steepling his fingers, King Jonathan continued in a more matter-of-fact manner, "Anyhow, I'm not sure that Cait agreeing to become a Bazhir would be as magical a solution to your problem as you hope."

"It will be, Your Majesty." Zahir's jaw clenched determinedly. "If a person has an ounce of Bazhir blood, that person is as much a Bazhir as someone who has nothing but Bazhir blood. An adopted Bazhir is as much a Bazhir as one born into the tribes."

"That's the custom," commented his knightmaster, frowning skeptically.

"Exactly." Satisfied with the impeccable nature of his logic, Zahir nodded. "That's the custom, and even the most traditional Bazhir can't protest when we follow it, sire."

"I'm afraid it won't be that simple, Zahir." Grimly, King Jonathan shook his head.

"The Bazhir have already accepted a northerner as Voice, Your Majesty." Zahir stuck out his chin. "That means they can accept a northerner as my wife."

"Squire, listen to me." The king's eyes pierced into Zahir. "Despite my best efforts to unify this realm, there are still racial tensions simmering under the surface. Both the northerners and the Bazhir mistrust each other and bear a considerable amount of contempt for one another's culture. As such, in picking the next Voice, I was conducting a delicate balancing act between what the northerners and the Bazhir need, and anything that alters that balance could damage all the unity that I have managed to create in this country. That is, I could not have a Bazhir who was not connected with the northern world and the Crown be my successor as Voice, because then the Bazhir would be tempted to splinter off from the realm upon my death, completely nullifying the point of my becoming the Voice in the first place. By the same token, I could not have somebody that the Bazhir would perceive as a northerner lead the tribes, and, Zahir, the amount of time you have spent in the north training to be a knight will be enough to make some Bazhir question whether you are fit to be the next Voice. If you marry Cait, even if she is made a Bazhir, that might very well be enough to persuade those dubious Bazhir that you are indeed not worthy of being their leader. Don't permit that to occur. The northerners, the Bazhir, and I all need you to succeed me as Voice."

Wishing that King Jonathan wasn't so charismatic since that made him want to agree unconditionally to something he couldn't, Zahir pressed his lips together. "Just like you need the queen for love and support, I need Cait, sire. I couldn't be a decent Voice without her."

"Mithros shield me, don't tell the Bazhir that!" his knightmaster exclaimed. "If you do, you'll ruin everything, and I'll have no choice but to conclude that your duty to this country means nothing to you."

Ignoring this, Zahir raised his nose loftily. "If Cait is willing to abide by the Bazhir customs, the Bazhir will adhere to them as well, because, if they refuse to do so, they will be acting dishonorably and unjustly, and I will not be Voice to such a disgraceful people."

"You don't mean that," the king snapped.

"I do." Zahir glared at his knightmaster. "I won't compromise my honor like you."

"You are dismissed, Squire," King Jonathan announced acidly. "We'll resume this discussion when you are feeling more reasonable."

Thinking that he would never be reasonable if that meant abandoning Cait, Zahir spun on his heel and stalked out of his knightmaster's study.


	32. Chapter 32

Midwinter Luck

"Such pretty jewelry," murmured Aisha, stopping to admire necklaces of sparkling rhinestones and pearls, as the surging ocean of shoppers in the Corus marketplace continued to flow around them. It was the third day of Midwinter, and Zahir and Aisha were trying to find presents for Cait and Keir, since, among the northerners, it was customary to exchange gifts on the third day of Midwinter. Zahir had hoped that most northerners would be celebrating the holiday with their families, so the Corus marketplace wouldn't be too congested. However, given the throngs in the marketplace, this had so far proven to be a vain hope.

"You're supposed to be shopping for a male," Zahir reminded his sister curtly. "Men don't wear rhinestone or pearl necklaces. At least, the ones girls want to court don't."

"Well, you're shopping for a girl," pointed out Aisha, as she stroked a shimmering pearl necklace. "You could buy her one of these to make her feel special and beautiful."

"If I purchase her one of these, Cait might end up strangling herself in a fight, just as you could strangle yourself in battle if you bought such a necklace," an exasperated Zahir snorted, dragging his sister away from the jewelry stall. "Like a typical foolish female, you see something attractive, and you want to have it, even if it isn't practical and even if it could kill you."

"It's not folly to wish to have a bit of beauty in your world," Aisha retorted, sticking her nose in the air loftily. "Besides, if it is an idiocy, it's one both males and females are susceptible to, or have you forgotten how much you are risking to be with Cait?"

"You're comparing apples to oranges, Aisha," countered Zahir defensively, his face flaming.

"Indeed I am," agreed Aisha, all cheeriness. "After all, what you're doing with Cait is about ten thousand times more dangerous than my wanting to buy a pretty necklace."

"I love Cait." Zahir's jaw clenched.

"That doesn't make what you're doing any less perilous or less emotional. In fact, that makes what you are doing even more dangerous and more emotional," replied Aisha, as she bent to examine winter hats another vendor was selling. "Keir mentioned that he wanted a new hat."

"This one looks nice and warm," Zahir suggested, picking one up and showing it to his sister.

"The colors clash with Keir's eyes," muttered Aisha, shaking her head. As Zahir, thinking that this was the last time he would attempt to help his sister pick out clothing, scowled and put down the hat again, she scooped one up and smiled as she studied it. "This one, however, is perfect."

After hackling with the trader to lower the price, as was the practice in Corus, where vendors liked to open with an offer which only someone with a grain of rice for brains or a bottomless pocketbook would accept, Aisha purchased the hat.

As he and his sister continued to wend their way through the crowds, looking for something for Cait, Zahir commented abruptly, "I was going to buy you a lavender headcovering in Persopolis, you know."

"That's nice," responded Aisha dryly. "It's always lovely to hear that someone considered getting me a gift, but, on second thought, decided not to. Truly, I feel so appreciated whenever somebody tells me something like that."

"Would you have worn the headcovering if I purchased it for you?" Zahir pressed.

For a moment, Aisha hesitated. Then, tossing back her dark hair, she answered, "Only for protection from the cold on days like today, but never for modesty's sake. I like my pretty face too much to hide it as though it were something to be ashamed of."

"Your pretty face is a temptation to others," stated Zahir through clenched teeth, as he bent to examine hairbrushes at a stall. "That is why you are supposed to conceal it—to prevent yourself and others from falling into sin."

"If I hide my face behind a veil, men will fall into sin just imagining what is beneath it. That which is concealed can be just as tempting as that which is revealed," remarked Aisha, grinning so that her white teeth shone in the weak wintry sunlight. "As such, I refuse to bury myself behind a veil and never do anything useful with my life."

"Laila, to employ your term, buries herself behind a veil, and she does much that is productive in her life," Zahir snapped, his fingers tightening around a brush. "Sewing, cooking, cleaning, and raising children are quite useful, and many females find them fulfilling. I don't see why throwing away all the tasks that you are intended to do in favor of those you personally find more stimulating makes you a better or nobler woman than Laila. I also don't see how regarding her as a victim because she chooses to engage in traditional womanly chores enhances the dignity of women as a whole. As far as I can see, you and all the progressives just act as though the only worthwhile women are those who pretend they are men. That's degrading women, not empowering them, and it's far more insulting to females than any conservative doctrine. At least under a conservative doctrine, women are glorified for fulfilling their traditional roles instead of for rejecting them."

"Calm down," Aisha ordered, resting a palm on his elbow. "Don't make a scene. Anyway, I wasn't insulting Laila. I love her as much as you do, Zahir. I just can't be her, and it's as unfair to me to expect me to be her as it is unjust to her to demand that she be me."

"I wouldn't want Laila to be you," Zahir spat, furious at himself for all the years he had favored Aisha over Laila, just like everyone except Hassan had. "You're selfish, only concerned with what you wish to do, and Laila is selfless, devoting her life to quietly serving others."

"As I said, I can't be Laila." Unfazed by his savage outburst, Aisha shrugged. "She never thinks about herself, but I am very much concerned with fulfilling my own dreams. Perhaps that makes me selfish, but I can't help that. After all, sometimes you have to be selfish, as you know from being with Cait."

"I'm nowhere near as selfish as you are," snarled Zahir, his eyes burning.

"Of course not." Aisha smiled merrily into his furious expression. "You are more selfish than Laila, and I am more selfish than you. With the three of us, we get progressively more selfish as we go down through the siblings. Consequently, it is perfectly natural that I should be more selfish than you and Laila. You can't fault me for the way I was born."

Finally, her smile broke through Zahir's foul temper, and he muttered, "Gods above, I can't be cross at you when you can make even that nonsense seem logical."

As he at last returned his attention to the hairbrushes, he saw a porcelain one with real shells embedded into the handle. Grinning triumphantly as he thought that the shells would remind Cait of the coast where she was raised, Zahir picked it up, and, after arguing with the vendor, paid a fair price for it.

Their shopping complete, Zahir and Aisha began their journey back to the palace. As they left the packed marketplace, Aisha asked, "Do you think that Keir and Cait will buy us anything for Midwinter?"

"They don't need to." Zahir shrugged dismissively. "Bazhir don't celebrate Midwinter."

"I know, but…" Aisha trailed off, as they exited the city and started to stroll down the path that led to the Royal Palace.

"In all my years among the northerners, I've never received a Midwinter present from any of them," Zahir informed her. "Of course, I never bought any northerner besides Cait a Midwinter gift. Still, you must not expect anything from Keir, because then you will only be disappointed when he doesn't have a present to offer you. It's not fair to expect him to waste money on a holiday you don't even celebrate, anyway."

"I can't help getting my hopes up." Aisha chuckled, as they entered the palace grounds and made their way to the gardens where they had planned to meet Cait and Keir. "I'm just naturally presumptuous."

"That's not something you should take pride in," he told her wryly.

"I take pride in everything about me," she commented, giggling as they stepped into the gardens.

Zahir was about to retort, but the words died before they could leave his lips when he spotted Cait sitting on a bench beside a now empty fountain.

"Cait!" he exclaimed, rushing over to her, and noting inwardly that nobody had ever looked prettier than she did right now with her cheeks flushed with the chill, her auburn hair whirling around her in the wind, and her cloak spread neatly around her on the bench.

"There's no need for you to sound so shocked to see me when we had a meeting arranged," Cait teased him, her lively rust-colored eyes glinting mischievously. "Anyway, speaking of surprises, I have one for you."

Before Zahir could reply, she withdrew a box from her pocket. Handing it to him, she commanded him breathlessly, "Open it. Go on."

Not bothering to point out that the Bazhir did not celebrate Midwinter, Zahir obeyed, and found himself staring down at a set of garnet prayer beads. Admiring the rich, earthy color of the beads, he lifted them up, and, as his fingers closed around them, he discovered that clutching the gemstones soothed him.

"They're wonderful, Cait," he whispered reverently, kissing her cheek. Then, remembering that the prayer beads northerners used had a different number of beads than the ones employed by the Bazhir, he counted the beads swiftly and was amazed to find that there were ninety-nine of them. "The number of beads is correct, too."

"Of course I got you the right number of prayer beads." Cait nudged him in the ribs. "Asking your sister how many beads the Bazhir use isn't that difficult, you know."

"Aisha did know that you were planning on giving me a gift, then," mumbled Zahir, indignant that his sibling had kept this crucial data from him.

"No, I like to keep my most important secrets to myself." Laughing, Cait leaned her head against his shoulder. "I think Aisha just believed I had an insane obsession with prayer beads when I badgered her with questions about them." Her hands rested over his, as she went on in a soft tone, "Now be sure to count on every bead with a prayer to keep the hope you hold in your heart."

"I will," he promised, even though he suspected that whenever he touched his prayer beads, his mind would end up focusing more upon Cait than upon the divine. Taking his hand away from Cait's to pull out the present he had for her, he added, "I have a gift for you, too."

"It's a lovely hairbrush." Cait's lips gently tickled his cheek as she kissed him. "Thank you."

"I hoped that the shells on the handle would remind of the sea, so you'll always stay home in your heart no matter how far away you travel from the place of your birth," he said, resting his palm over her heart. Fire blazed through him as he realized just how close to her breasts his hand had strayed, but he didn't pull his palm away from her. Even through the thick garments she was wearing, he could feel her heart pounding against his skin, and the sensation of her heart beating beneath his hand reminded him of just how alive they both were. If he died the next moment because of this single minute with Cait, it would be worth it, he thought. He lived more in one moment with Cait than he would in a century without her.

"How thoughtful of you." Beaming at him, Cait slipped the prayer beads around his neck, her eyes glittering with satisfaction as she did so. "There. I want you to have the beads close to your heart, because if you keep the gods near to your heart, they'll keep you close to theirs in return."

Before Zahir could remark that the gods had abandoned him years ago, Aisha, who had been exchanging presents with Keir on a neighboring bench, flounced up to them, shouting excitedly as she pointed to a pair of dove-shaped clips in her dark hair, "Aren't the hairclips Keir bought for me gorgeous?"

"It's rude to interrupt." Zahir wrinkled his nose at the intrusion upon his precious time with Cait. "It's also ill-mannered to boast about your possessions."

"The clips are very beautiful, Aisha," Cait remarked. Then, swatting Zahir lightly on the knee, she hissed in his ear, "You're supposed to compliment gifts when people show them to you, as you should be well aware, Mr. Etiquette."

"Don't encourage her," grumbled Zahir. "You'll only inflate her already overlarge head."

"I don't know why of all the families in the world, I had to be born into the one where you would be my brother," Aisha scoffed, spinning on her heel and hurrying back over to Keir.

Watching Aisha's retreating figure, Zahir observed reluctantly, "I should return to the palace soon. I have to prepare to wait on another stupid Midwinter party, which is likely to kill any holiday spirit within me."

"Midwinter luck, then," smirked Cait before she brought her lips to his.

"I'll need it," he mumbled, pulling away from her after kissing her for a second that he knew he would recall well into his senility. "This evening, I'll be dealing with Master Oakbridge, who is the epitome of the stress over minor details that fills most northerners at this most joyful and peaceful time on their calendar, not that Master Oakbridge is not ever on the verge of an apoplectic fit, mind you."

"Well, since I gave you a kiss, you get one wish," Cait pointed out, offering him a crooked smile.

"My wish is love and happiness for you," murmured Zahir, kissing her.

"Then you should know that it already came true in this moment." As she established as much, Cait turned rust-colored eyes that were flooded with such tender love for him that he could feel his heart ripping apart as he thought about how little he deserved to be cared about like that by her.

"I love you," he whispered, kissing her passionately, and hoping that his love would be enough to compensate for all that she might end up sacrificing for him.

"I love you, too," she breathed, her cheeks flushed, as he finally released her.

Feeling as if he floated instead of walked up the snowy and icy pathways to the palace, Zahir thought that the assurance that she loved him was the best Midwinter gift that anyone in the history of Tortall had ever received. He was blessed because he was loved by Cait, he noted mentally as he entered his bedroom and began to change into the (in his opinion) ugly uniform he would be required to wear when he served at the party.

Later, at the party, as he carried around a tray loaded with delicate marzipan figures carved into numerous festive shapes, Zahir kept boredom at bay by reliving the kisses he had shared with Cait. As he moved through the crowds of splendidly-dressed nobles, he observed inwardly that Cait was ten times prettier than any of them in her simple clothing. When his nostrils were deluged with the piney scents emitted by the heavy logs that burned in the two massive hearths, he reminded himself of just how much sweeter the aroma that wafted from Cait's skin was. As for the lilting tunes played by the musicians, their sinful songs would never be as soothing to his ear as Cait's voice.

He was only jerked out of his wistful contemplation of Cait when, as he approached the king and the queen, who were wrapped in an animated conversation with the Tyran ambassador, he heard the ambassador state through a brittle smile, "All the merchant families in the republic I represent are rather displeased with the fact that they haven't received any payment from your textile merchants for the cloths they sent."

"Meanwhile, all our textile merchants are discontented because the cloths they ordered have not yet arrived at our ports," replied Queen Thayet crisply. "As soon as the cloths our merchants ordered reach our ports, the merchant families you serve will be paid. Therefore, the best solution to the problem your merchants have would be the prompt arrival of the cloth at our ports."

"It's impossible that the cloth hasn't already arrived," the Tyran envoy blustered, his fake smile dangerously close to disappearing from his taut features entirely. "Even during bad weather, the journey by sea from Tyra to Tortall takes a week, and it has been three since the last cloths left our ports, Your Majesty."

"The ships must have sunk then or encountered pirates, in that case, ambassador, because the wares they carried never reached our shores," answered the queen, her eyebrows arching.

"That sort of misfortune meets one ship, not twenty, Your Majesty," countered the Tyran diplomat.

"Then my wife and I can only suggest that the merchant families you represent dedicate all their energy to solving the mystery of what happened to their vessels," King Jonathan declared sharply, and Zahir knew he shouldn't be eavesdropping, but anything that angered his knightmaster was worth learning about. "My people will not be paying for goods that never arrived, you understand, since that is poor business."

"The merchant families I represent believe that they have already solved the mystery of the disappearing textiles." The Tyran ambassador's eyes narrowed even as his brittle smile remained entrenched on his lips. "They believe that your merchants have stolen the ships and their cargo. The families I represent respect business acumen, but they cannot tolerate thievery."

"Your merchant families are wrong, ambassador." The king shook his head. "The textile merchants have complained to me about not receiving the cloths they ordered, and they would not attract attention to the missing vessels if they were the ones who stole the ships and the cargo."

"The textile industry in Tortall is suffering," the queen added tersely. "If our textile merchants had the supply of cloth that you claim, that would hardly be so."

"Your Majesties believe this is all a dreadful misunderstanding in which the whole thing has been blown out of proportion, in that case?" the Tyran diplomat inquired, bowing and Zahir wondered vaguely if any politician had ever suggested that only part of an issue, rather than the whole of it, had ever been blown out of proportion.

"We do," announced King Jonathan firmly. "We are confident that we will be able to convince your merchant families of that."

"In this instance, the merchant families I represent would want to receive an assurance from you or your wife in person that your merchants were not stealing their ships and their cloth," the Tyran ambassador stipulated. "Naturally, due to the pressures of running their businesses, they could not come to Tortall in person, so either you or your wife would have to travel to Tyra in order to meet with them."

"My wife and I will consider the gracious invitation the Tyran merchants have extended to us." King Jonathan inclined his head politely.

"I'm happy to hear it." The Tyran envoy bowed. "After all, Tyran hospitality is unparalleled."

As the Tyran diplomat bustled off to confront someone else, Zahir thought that, at any rate, the Tyrans couldn't be worse hosts than they were guests. However, as his gaze riveted on his knightmaster, all his snide inner commentary faded. For the first time, he could truly see the confusion King Jonathan was masking behind a dignified expression, and that made him recognize just how difficult being a king was. If there were times when it was unbearably hard to be the leader of a tribe, then there must be far more occasions when being in charge of an entire realm was impossibly complicated.

The king hadn't asked to be responsible for the wellbeing of a country, Zahir thought, feeling the prayer beads Cait had given him earlier warm his chest. When it came down to it, King Jonathan was just striving to do the best he could with every no-win situation that thrust itself upon him, and Zahir reminded himself sternly that if he, Zahir, were busy doing the best he could, he wouldn't have the time to criticize somebody else for doing the best they could.

Seeing how heavily the king's duties were currently weighing upon his knightmaster's shoulders, Zahir remembered with a stomach squirm how it felt to be convinced that your mind and body were about to break upon you. He would never wish that nauseating, terrifying, and soul-crushing sensation upon anyone, not even the man who had so callously invaded his brain to inflict such a torment upon him.

Chewing on his lower lip, he recalled how his knightmaster had been able to send calming tendrils of energy into his mind. He mustered all his willpower, and, ignoring the dubious contingent in his head that told him he would never be able to perform such a task, wove some of his essence into thin strands of what he hoped would be a relaxing force. Then, before he could lose his nerve, he sent the ripples of soothing power out to the Voice.

Still afraid to have the Voice actually enter his head after the fiasco that had occurred last time the king had access to his mind, Zahir erected a barrier around his brain as soon as he had released the comforting tendrils out to his knightmaster.

Then, realizing that he could not possibly continue to eavesdrop once he had revealed his presence to King Jonathan, he stepped forward, asking, "Would Your Majesties care for some marzipan?"

"No, thank you," Queen Thayet answered, and Zahir understood. He would have lost interest in food after the first night of parties.

"Thank you, Zahir," said the king quietly, taking a marzipan figure from the tray, and Zahir knew from the way that his knightmaster's eyes locked upon him that the man was really expressing gratitude for the brief mental connection he had made.

Uncomfortably aware of the cliché that eyes were windows into a person's soul and not wanting King Jonathan to have that sort of access into his being again, Zahir ducked his head, bowed, and hurried away to shove marzipan under the noses of more of the realm's distinguished individuals.

When the party had finally drawn to a close, and Zahir, who had just changed into his nightclothes, was about to blow out his candles and go to sleep, a knock sounded on his door.

"Come in," he called through a yawn, thinking that he would infinitely rather sleep than entertain anyone.

His exhaustion was only increased when the king entered the room and sat down upon his bed, remarking, "I want to thank you, Squire, for briefly activating our bond to comfort me tonight."

"It was nothing, sire," muttered Zahir, staring down at his quilt and wishing that his knightmaster would disappear, so that his embarrassment could end and his slumber could commence.

"Opening the bond between us for however short a time after I abused it wasn't nothing for you," King Jonathan pointed out, gently lifting Zahir's chin. "The fact that you moved past your own pain in order to calm the one who had caused you that agony certainly wasn't nothing for me, Zahir."

Zahir didn't have a clue how to reply to this, and, before he could stammer out a weak response, he felt strong arms wrap around him. Then, before he could process what had happened to him, he was pressed against his knightmaster's chest in a hug. The part of him that remembered all too well what it was like to have a million voices in his head screaming for him to surrender to the king while vomit burned up his throat into his mouth and his knees trembled with the desire to collapse on him snapped at him to extricate himself immediately from King Jonathan's clasp.

Unfortunately, this rational element was drowned out by an emotional side of him. This sentimental part of him wanted nothing more than to be embraced, since a hug was physical proof that he was loved and that he wasn't alone.

It was always like this with him, he thought bitterly. When his father had thrashed him, the components of his psyche that handled love had gotten all confused with anger, shame, and pride. If the hands that held the rod that beat you black and blue were the same ones that occasionally stretched out to embrace you, you had to accept the hug. You couldn't refuse the faint offering of love that might excuse all the pain you were forced to endure, because it was better to imagine that you deserved the agony than to believe that you were a helpless victim. Nothing was more pathetic than being helpless, and when you were hurting, you would accept a hug from anyone, even the one who had caused you the pain in the first place. It was awful, but it was the stark reality of the situation.

Yes, he concluded, hating himself as he let his knightmaster embrace him, all he had ever really wanted was a father's love, and being denied it was enough to render him absolutely insane. He was a lunatic, and the evidence was plain in the fact that he allowed himself to be abused and just forgave the people who hurt him the most…

Questing tendrils from King Jonathan's mind reached the surface of his brain, seeking permission to enter. Just as he always gave in to the tender pat on the head that followed the vicious kick in the ribs, Zahir lowered the barricade surrounding his mind, and, a second later, a serene presence slid into his brain. This time, the presence made no attempt to stroke the pain away. Instead, it accepted the pain, gingerly urging him to do the same.

"I can't, Your Majesty," he sobbed into the king's shoulder, despising himself for crying when he hadn't done so when a rod hammered into his back repeatedly. He was so weak it was astonishing that he could hold up his end of a conversation.

_Crying is not weak when you have a reason to do it, and, when you don't it's called whining_, the Voice spoke inside his head, and he realized with a surge of humiliation that King Jonathan must have heard his thoughts about crying. Apparently, he truly could have no secrets when his knightmaster was in his brain. _In this case, crying can be healing. Sometimes you just have to cry out the memory of the horrible things that have happened to you. Sometimes crying is the only way to let go of what is destroying you on the inside. _

_I can't let go_, Zahir protested, knowing that the king would hear him even if he didn't open his mouth. He couldn't forget how once, when he had been pretending to be asleep after a particularly harsh beating, his father's callused palms had dried the salty streams from his face, and he couldn't escape the knowledge that his father would have slapped him instead of wiped his tears away if he had been awake. He couldn't stop equating love with a pain that he found simultaneously attractive and repulsive. _The memories may be eating me up from the inside, but I don't want to forget them. In many ways, they are all I have left of my father, and I never want to betray or dishonor him by forgetting him. _

"Zahir." King Jonathan's hand squeezed his shoulder. "You have to find a way to separate the good memories of your father from the bad, so you can remember the good ones and forget the bad."

"The good is too entwined with the bad." Miserably, Zahir shook his head. "The love is all mixed up with the pain, rage, and humiliation, sire."

"You should discuss this with your sisters," the king suggested. "They suffered as you did."

"I can't talk to them about this, Your Majesty." This time, Zahir shook his head wildly. There was no way he could burden sweet Laila with horror stories of his beatings, and he certainly couldn't confide in Aisha how hard he had been hit every time he took all the blame for something she did, because that would negate the whole point of him trying to protect her from their father's rage by assuming responsibility for her actions. "Let them forget or recall my father in peace. Besides, what happened to me was my fault."

"That's not true," King Jonathan said firmly, gripping Zahir's shoulder more tightly. "Nobody ever deserves to be mistreated—that's why it is referred to as abuse."

"My stubbornness brings these things upon myself, sire," argued Zahir, thinking that he would rather close his eyes to the abuse he had suffered than admit to seeing it.

"Even if you were five times as headstrong as you are, your father and I wouldn't be justified in what we did to you, Squire," his knightmaster insisted, azure eyes grim. "What we did to you was wrong, and, when it comes down to it, I might be even guiltier than your father. After all, I knew how you were abused, and I understood how much courage it required for you to trust me, so I never should have broken my promise about not hurting you or used the sacred bond between us as a weapon against you. At the start of your squireship, I set out to heal you, and instead I ended up wounding you further, making it even more challenging for you to trust anyone else. However, you can rest assured that what I break I mend. Somehow, I will find a way to make you whole again, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"I'm not broken, Your Majesty," Zahir scoffed, thinking that, when the king looked so resolute, he could almost believe the man's impossible promise. "I'm just slightly dented."

"Of course you are." King Jonathan's lips quirked upward as he removed a leather hilt from his belt and dumped it on Zahir's lap. "Here is a present for you."

"Bazhir don't celebrate Midwinter, sire," mumbled Zahir, refusing to pick up the scabbard, because accepting a Midwinter gift from Cait was one thing, but allowing himself to receive one from the Voice was another.

"They can still receive gifts around the middle of the winter," the king educated him wryly. "Now, open your present, Squire."

Obediently, Zahir slipped the dagger out of the leather sheath. As soon as he removed it, he could only gawk at the keen steel knife that balanced perfectly in his grip and sent tremors of death up his fingers. Without even glancing under the cross-guard of the hilt, he knew that the weapon came from Raven Armory, and the instant he understood that, he recognized that he could not accept this present when he had nothing to offer the king in return. Taking a rock was one thing, but a dagger from the best armory in the country was another.

"I can't accept this," he choked out, shoving the knife back into the sheath and thrusting the scabbard back to his knightmaster. "It's far too expensive, Your Majesty."

"Come, come, Zahir," King Jonathan chided. "You need a weapon from Raven Armory to go with the polishing cloth you have from there. I can't have a squire with poorly coordinated accessories or people will talk."

Biting his lip as he thought about the polishing cloth his father had bought him when he became a page, Zahir stuck out his chin. "I can't take a gift of this high quality when I have nothing to offer you in return, my liege. That wouldn't be fair to you."

"You seem to have forgotten some of the laws of fealty, Squire, and so I will refresh your memory." As he established as much, the king dropped the sheathed dagger into Zahir's lap once again. "I am the king, and you are my vassal. You give me service, and I reward you for it. I am obligated to reward your service, but you are not obliged to provide me anything in return except your service. In short, I give that you may give, and you give that I may give."

"It is a lovely dagger," Zahir murmured, bowing his head as he realized that he couldn't argue with his own desire to have the knife, his knightmaster, and the laws of fealty at the same time. He had tried to be honorable and he had failed, but he had seriously attempted it, and that was all that you could demand of any teenage boy, he thought. "Thank you, sire. I will treasure it."

"Happy Midwinter, Zahir." King Jonathan tilted Zahir's head up and kissed his forehead. "May the gods' blessings be upon you in the new year."

His face ablaze from this disconcerting display of affection, Zahir considered reminding his clearly very forgetful knightmaster that Bazhir did not celebrate Midwinter. However, when a more impudent reply flared up in his mind, he remarked instead, "You know, Your Majesty, not everyone will get to enjoy the wish of good fortune you bestow upon them. After all, some people will perish next year. Others will be maimed in battle or in accidents. Still others will be stricken with incurable diseases, or will be terribly disfigured in fires. Also, let's not forget the rapes and the robberies, for there will be plenty of them. As such, many people won't be able to enjoy the happy and lucky new year you wish them."

"Just do the best you can, Squire—that's all I ever ask of you." The king chuckled. "Anyway, you should have a good start to the new year when we leave for Tyra shortly after Midwinter ends for reasons you no doubt already comprehend."

"You knew I was eavesdropping on you, sire?" Forgetting that it was stupid to indict himself, Zahir cocked his head in puzzlement.

"Of course, young one." King Jonathan's chuckle transformed itself into a full-fledged laugh. "My beard may not be gray yet, but I can still be a wise man, and I can certainly realize that it is beneficial for you to be exposed to as much as you can about government. A Voice who will have to deal frequently with the Crown needs to understand these matters."

"I thought my footwork was so silent, too." Zahir sighed. "Well, Mithros preserve me when I'm in Tyra, because they eat slugs as a delicacy there, so I don't even want to imagine what their normal food is like, which means that I might just need Mithros to intervene to save me from starvation."

"Don't exaggerate," the king scolded, swatting his knee. "It won't be that bad, and Tyra is warmer than everywhere in Tortall except the desert. I should think you'd be grateful for that."

"I would be if Tyra wasn't the land of rain and sleet, Your Majesty," snorted Zahir, rolling his eyes.

"You'll be inside most of the time," King Jonathan pointed out as he left. "Good night, Zahir."

"Good night, sire," Zahir whispered at the already shut door. As he settled his head upon his pillow at last, he noted that his Midwinter had finally been filled with the family and the reconciliation that northerners said Midwinter was supposed to be the time for. Of course, he added as he drifted off to sleep, perhaps Cait's prayer beads were just protecting him. Maybe the gods would keep him closer to them now that he had them, after all.


	33. Chapter 33

Lost at Sea

During page training, Zahir had never sympathized with the Lump whenever she had suddenly acted as though she were carved from stone whenever she was confronted with even a moderate height. In fact, he, Joren, Garvey, and Vinson had derived much entertainment from mocking her weakness. All of them had been delighted with this proof that the Lump, when it came down to it, did not possess the strength and the courage it required to serve the realm as a knight.

Now, though, Zahir found himself empathizing with the Lump, who was just about the last person in the world he expected to feel any sort of understanding for. After all, as he gazed out at the turbulent, thundercloud-colored waves smashing against the Port Caynn wharf two weeks after Midwinter, he was rapidly discovering that phobias weren't rational, and they definitely weren't controllable. Indeed, anyone studying him from the outside might conclude from the terror he was struggling to conceal that he was a coward when, in reality, it took every ounce of nerve he had not to flee from the waves pounding remorselessly against the dock.

Seeing the ocean—which he had never imagined could possibly be so massive and so wild—stretch out far beyond where his field of vision ended like the desert was supposed to was enough to make him freeze. The river Olorun that flowed gently by the palace was one thing, because he could spot where that body of water ended, and so he could always assure himself that the river really wasn't all that different from an oasis. However, a seemingly infinite ocean was another matter entirely. Only land should appear endless, he thought. Water should have a clearly defined beginning and end so that nobody got confused.

What was even worse than the apparently infinite quality of the ocean, though, was its roaring, foam-capped waves, which seemed eager to break and drown anything that made contact with the cruel body of water. Just looking at the churning waves was enough to make Zahir nauseous even while he remained on the relatively stable quay.

Glancing at the vessel intended to transport all the diplomats, guards, and servants accompanying the king to Tyra while the queen remained in Tortall to rule in her husband's absence, Zahir couldn't prevent himself from noticing just how feeble the firm wood looked against the mighty sea. In fact, when he saw how small it was in comparison to the tossing expanse of water before him, he couldn't help but wonder if all the people, their luggage, and the supplies needed to sustain them on the voyage to Tyra would cause the frail ship to sink like a pebble to the bottom of the ocean.

The idea of being buried in a watery grave was enough to make Zahir feel like a noose was wrapped about his neck. With more than a trace of hysteria, he thought that if all the people couldn't fit, he would be the first one to volunteer to stay behind, since he was so noble that way.

Perhaps scenting his fear the way a hound did a rabbit, Trevor, who was standing beside him, rested a hand upon his shoulder, murmuring, "Relax, my friend. You are wound so tightly I can hear you squeaking."

Zahir thanked Mithros for possibly the hundredth time that Trevor was apprenticed to one of the envoys traveling with King Jonathan to Tortall. Otherwise, he would have gone insane during the trip to Port Caynn with nobody his age to talk to or else have lost his wits even earlier during the interminable fittings for the new clothes that every member of the delegation was compelled to endure, because the monarchs insisted that outfits of the finest cloth were necessary to impress the Tyran merchant families.

After thanking Mithros for Trevor's presence, Zahir mumbled, "I see no reason to relax when the ocean could kill us all. After all, I'm not that depressed."

"Don't worry so much," Trevor assured him, beaming and pointing at a salmon pink shell drifting along on the current. "Just like that little shell, people and ships float, Zahir. If you want to survive, all you have to do is relax and allow yourself to flow with the ocean, instead of fighting the current."

"If I'm drowning, you can bet that I'll be battling the current tooth and nail until I die," muttered Zahir.

Trevor opened his mouth to reply, but the words never emerged from his lips in the regulated mayhem that ensued as the Tortallan delegation, in order of rank, finally boarded the vessel. As his superiors made their way onto the ship, Zahir closed his eyes, so that he wouldn't have to see the ocean although he could still feel its spray whacking his cheeks, taste its salt on his tongue, and smell its vile weeds in his nostrils.

Trying to remind himself that the sea couldn't be all bad if Cait loved it, Zahir felt his arm shaken by Trevor, who hissed, "It's time for us to board, Zahir."

Reluctantly opening his eyes, Zahir clattered up the gangplank after Trevor, and, ignoring all the voices in his head that screamed at him that this was his last opportunity to turn away from this mad journey, stepped onto the ship.

When his feet landed on the wooden floor of the vessel, he had hoped that he would not be able to feel the waves bobbing beneath him as he could on the quay. It took him barely a minute of standing on the crowded deck to realize that this hope was destined to be dashed. If anything, he felt the water moving beneath him even more on the ship than he had on the wharf.

Sweat trickled down his spine, and his knees shook as he discovered that he was dizzy already from the untamed motions of the ocean. As he resisted the sudden urge to regurgitate the toast he had eaten for breakfast, he asked himself how he could possibly survive the days at sea it would take them to reach Tyra.

"I hate the gods-forsaken Tryans," he grumbled. "If it weren't for them, none of us would be on this wretched boat, awaiting our imminent death by drowning."

"Now, now, you must not get into the habit of saying such things, because making such remarks in Tyra will cause a public relations nightmare," Trevor informed him, grinning.

Before Zahir could retort, a lean sailor, whose straw-yellow hair was tugged back in a ponytail and whose face was craggy from the salted wind constantly chafing it, approached them, announcing crisply, "I'm to escort the two of ye to yer room. Ye have five minutes to settle yerselves in yer quarters before the king wants ye in his office with the rest of the delegation to go over everything ye'll need to know about Tyra and more."

"I can barely contain my excitement," Zahir snorted to Trevor, as the pair of them followed the seaman across the deck, Zahir observing just how unsettling it was to walk on a rocking ship. Then, as the two of them trailed the sailor down a steep ladder into the lower level of the vessel, and he clenched the railing to prevent himself from pitching onto the floor of the narrow hallway beneath him, he added, "At least I get to share a room with you again. It's fortunate that whoever organized where we would sleep decided that the two of us really are about equal on the wonderful pole of status that governs all political life."

"Fortunate, but not coincidental," observed Trevor cheerily, as they walked down the corridor, which was constricted enough to serve as a reminder of just how precious space was on a vessel. "You see, my esteemed mentor, Lord Conan of Linshart, assigned me the joyful duty of figuring out who would room with whom on this voyage. I took the liberty of pairing you with me, knowing that you are one of the few individuals familiar with my obnoxiously upbeat morning nature."

"You're irritatingly happy all the time—not just in the morning." Zahir rolled his eyes, as the seaman stopped outside a door. "Anyway, you probably just didn't want me offending anyone with all my snide remarks."

"Yes, I do consider myself quite immune to your vicious commentary on every conceivable issue by now." Trevor laughed, while the sailor opened the door, revealing a room cramped even with nobody in it.

"Here ye go," grunted the seaman, as Trevor and Zahir entered what would be their quarters for as long as the journey, which, hopefully, would end in Tyra, lasted. Then, before either of them could thank him, the sailor bustled off, doubtlessly heading back up to the deck to help cast the ship off from the dock.

For a moment, standing nearly on top of one another, Zahir and Trevor examined their room. The furnishings were sparse, but, given the amount of space, that was probably a blessing in disguise. After all, even with just a small nightstand and two bunks, which resembled planks more than beds, jutting out of one wall, the quarters were jammed.

"Would you prefer the top or bottom bunk?" inquired Trevor, somehow managing a courteous bow in a space Zahir could barely breathe in.

"The bottom," answered Zahir, feeling light-headed and weak-keened from the constant jerking of the ship. The less distance he had to travel to lie down, the better, as far as he was concerned.

Hating himself for being stupid enough to not only leave the desert but to climb onboard a boat, Zahir collapsed on his bunk. Far too soon for his liking, it was time for him and Trevor to attend the meeting. With a groan, he pushed himself off his bunk, and, still accustoming himself to the pitching of the vessel, he walked down the narrow hallway with Trevor, his footwork wobbling more than it had since he was a toddler. Then, he clambered up the ladder that led back onto the main deck, cursing the fact that the king had been given the captain's cabin, which, of course, had to be located on the main deck.

Finally, after hobbling across the main deck, Zahir found himself in the office King Jonathan had claimed. Relieved, he plopped into one of the empty chairs surrounding the table that filled most of the room with Trevor taking the vacant seat beside him.

Trying not to think about how a powerful wave could send the table toppling over upon them, because he didn't need a reminder of just how helpless they all were on the water, Zahir clutched the arms of his chair, taking comfort in the solidness of the wood.

Members of the delegation trickled in until all the seats had somebody occupying them, and King Jonathan remarked briskly, "We are all here now. Wonderful. Let's get started, and make this meeting as quick and as painless as possible."

Zahir had no objection to that idea. As far as he was concerned, the entire voyage should be made as quick and as painless as possible. Of course, anything that had his stomach knotted and his knees shuddering as this trip by ship did could never be termed painless…

"All of you, as you know, have been selected to accompany me on a very important diplomatic mission to Tyra," the king continued, and Zahir suspected that, before long, he would have more reasons to wish that he had never been chosen to travel to Tyra with his knightmaster. His suspicion was confirmed as King Jonathan went on, "That means that all of you will have the honor and the responsibility of serving as representatives of our country. While you are in Tyra, you must conduct yourself as though your every word and action were being judged by our hosts. Do nothing that could alienate our hosts, because we are striving to bridge a gulf between our two realms, not create more rifts. Everyone present should see it as their duty to close as much of the gap between our two countries as possible, which means that everybody here should perceive it as their responsibility to be as charming to the Tyrans as they can be."

Here, King Jonathan broke off to offer the room his broadest smile, as though he were demonstrating to them all just what being charming entailed. Slowly, he turned his head around the table, ensuring that everyone assembled felt the full brunt of his captivating grin. Watching as everybody who experienced direct contact with the king's beam ended up smiling, Zahir thought that his knightmaster's grin might be the most terrible weapon Tortall possessed.

Nobody could resist that smile, Zahir noted inwardly, as King Jonathan's beam focused on him, and, although he was well aware how much callousness his knightmaster's charisma concealed, he couldn't prevent his lips from twisting upward. Even though he understood that he was as charming as a slap to the face, he felt, when the king was grinning at him like this, that he was charming.

When King Jonathan smiled at him, he was happy, because the king was pleased with him, and, as pathetic as it sounded, he wanted nothing more than to do whatever was necessary to keep his knightmaster grinning. With King Jonathan beaming at him, he felt as though he were both acknowledged and approved of, and maybe that was all he had ever truly desired. Perhaps, in the end, all he really wished for was for someone to behold him and not look away.

Whatever it was, when his knightmaster smiled at him, he was convinced that he had worth, because a king had grinned at him personally. Even knowing how King Jonathan manipulated people, it was impossible for Zahir to feel anything but flattered when his knightmaster beamed at him. It was only after the king's smile had riveted on somebody else that he hated himself for allowing himself to be enraptured by a grin that had meant nothing to King Jonathan.

"While we are here, I think that it would be wise if we discussed several key points about the Tyran society we will be entering," the king said, and Zahir noted with disdain that most of the office's occupants were still smiling stupidly.

Apparently, everybody just wanted to feel important enough to be acknowledged by royalty, and everyone just wished to be convinced that they were charming and worthy of being grinned at. All the king had to do was exploit each individual's natural craving for attention and approval. It was enough to make his stomach churn, or maybe that was just the motion of the waves beneath him…

"When we enter Tyra, we must remember that, although it is nominally a republic, it is, in reality, much more of an oligarchy run by a coalition of seven powerful merchant and banking families," stated King Jonathan, and Zahir struggled to overcome his dizziness enough to take some interest in politics. "These merchant and banking families dominate the economy. Not only do they control the production of goods, but they also govern money lending and debt collection. In addition to that, they regulate the country's food supply, since, owing to Tyra's swampy land, Tyra is ill-suited for agriculture and must import most of its food to the capital city, where a vast majority of the populace lives."

Imagining almost an entire realm's population shoved into one city caused the Bazhir in Zahir to feel even sicker. In his opinion, people were meant to merge themselves with their land, no matter how inhospitable the place they inhabited was. They weren't supposed to cover the country with cobblestones and destroy any natural beauty with buildings that were really nothing more than monuments to human egotism.

"Since the geography of Tyra has historically hindered its agriculture development, the merchant and banking families have, over the centuries, been able to seize all the political and social power for themselves," King Jonathan continued. "The seven powerful merchant and banking families intermarry, and, from among themselves, they select a leader, whom they call the Vox Populi. The Vox Populi presides over the republic's council, which is comprised of representatives from the seven major families, and makes most of the decisions for the country. It is the merchant and banking families who patronize the arts, funding the construction of beautiful statues and cathedrals intended not only to glorify the gods, but also to serve as monuments to the skills of the artists who create them and to the generosity of the families who paid for them. Similarly, it is the merchant and banking families who pay for the schools that ultimately train the clerks who run much of their businesses and the envoys who represent them abroad. Of course, it is also the merchant families who provide jobs for most common Tyrans by employing them in the sewing of cloths. All of this, essentially, means that while the members of these powerful merchant and banking families may not possess noble titles, it must be understood that they wield much the same social, political, and economic authority of nobles, and that the current Vox Populi, Giovanni Medica, should be treated like a king."

After glancing around the table to satisfy himself that everybody present had comprehended this crucial detail, the king smiled again. "The members of all the seven families pride themselves on being cultured, which is why they surround themselves with poets and artists at their feasts. Compliment them on any poems they share with you, any music that they play for you, or any drawings that they show you. Admire the statues and portraits in their villas. Praise the works of art that they have erected throughout the city. In short, whenever possible, call attention to the learning and fine taste of our hosts."

As Zahir's stomach twisted further in protest of all the sycophancy he would be forced to witness once he landed in Tyra, King Jonathan's grin faded as he commented, "On a grimmer note, our agents in Tyra inform me that there is a sizeable minority of the population comprised of an ethnic group referred to as the Hibrus. Over the centuries, the Hibrus have faced much persecution from the rest of the Tyrans. Currently, all the Hibrus are mandated to live outside the city of Tyra and are forced by the powerful governing families to work without payment dying clothes and cleaning the streets—"

"The Hibrus are enslaved, you mean, sire," Zahir cut in, swallowing the bile that had scorched up his esophagus. When everybody in the room turned to stare at him, he recognized with a pang from all the pale faces studying him with astonishment or hostility that, as usual, he was the only Bazhir present. That meant that he alone could sympathize with the plight of the Hibrus. While everyone else might pretend to feel sorry for the Hibrus in the interest of political correctness, none of them could really understand what it was like to be oppressed. None of them could begin to imagine what it was like to have their lives or their lands stolen from them because some other racial group perceived them as less than human, and, as a result, they would end up treating the Hibrus as less than human.

"You must never say such a thing to the Tyrans." King Jonathan shook his head. "Officially, slavery is outlawed in Tyra. Legally, all the Hibrus are employed by the government, receiving clothing, shelter, and food as wages rather than money. On parchment, the system resembles serfdom, and so Tortallans would be regarded as foolish hypocrites to attack it as unjust. This is especially true when our aim is not to free the Hibrus, but, instead, is to resolve a trade disagreement with the Tyrans, which brings me back to my initial reason for mentioning the Hibrus. No matter what we may personally think of the treatment of the Hibrus, we can't allow that to compromise our diplomatic position. That means that we will make a policy of not starting any discussion about the Hibrus with any Tyran. If a Tyran should broach the issue with any of us, we will not make any remarks that could be construed as critical of the Tyran government's behavior toward the Hibrus."

"Understood, Your Majesty." Zahir nodded bitterly. He comprehended perfectly well why gold always outweighed human rights on the scales of mortal justice.

He could feel vomit blazing a fiery path up his throat once more. This time, he wasn't certain that he had the strength it required to hold the throw up down in his stomach where it belonged. After all, a savage part of him wanted to vomit all over the northerners, so they could understand for the first time what it was like to be dirty. Indeed, it was only a stern reminder of how weak and undignified he would look doing so that allowed him to keep his throw up down as the king concluded the meeting.

The instant the conference drew to an end, Zahir hurried out to the railing on the deck. Shutting his eyes so he wouldn't have to glance at the frothing waves, he vomited into the ocean. As he hurled the contents of his stomach into the sea, he felt a hand clasp his shoulder and heard Trevor murmur in his ear, "We'll get you back to your bunk. You'll feel better then."

Once he had finished throwing up, he permitted Trevor to steer him away from the railing, across the deck, and back down to their quarters. Even with Trevor's support, the journey seemed to last forever as far as his hazy head and trembling knees were concerned.

When he finally dropped onto his bunk and slid his blanket over his feverish body, he couldn't even choke out an expression of gratitude to Trevor for the other boy's assistance before his eyes had slipped closed, and he was lost in a memory.

_It was cold the day before he departed the Royal Palace with the rest of the delegation to Tyra. He knew that he should not pick at old scabs for fear of causing them to bleed again, but some masochistic streak in him wished to inflict upon himself the agony of reliving brutal injuries of the past that had all too much impact on the present. Even if he could find no peace in revisiting old pains that determinedly refused to die, at least when he saw the blood pouring from ancient wounds, he would know that he was still alive despite everything he had suffered that should have killed him. _

_That perverse impulse was what had made him ask his sister as they practiced archery together, the wind tearing through their cloaks and their breath shining like fog in the wintry air, "Aisha, do you ever think about how Father hit us?" _

"_I try not to." Aisha had kept her gaze on her bow as she smoothly attached an arrow to it. "I'd rather remember the times he taught us to ride or told us stories by the fire. In general, I prefer to focus on the good instead of the bad, even when there is more bad than good." _

"_I strive to do the same when it comes to Father," Zahir burst out, his eyes burning with frustration at his own inability to let the dead past remain in its grave. "I can't do it, though. The beatings are etched into my very flesh, haunting me, and they mostly overshadow the memories of the good times with Father." _

"_I'm not surprised that you can't forget Father's thrashings." Aisha's arrow had slammed into the bull's eye of the target before she lowered her bow and reached out to clutch his hand. "He hit you much harder than he did Laila or me. Really, I think it's amazing that you can still walk after what you endured under his rod." _

"_It wasn't that awful." Zahir chewed on his lower lip, wishing that Common had words that could accurately describe just how emotionally—and physically—painful it was to lie on your stomach on your sleeping mat, feeling your father's rod rip into your skin, hearing the whack of wood on flesh, knowing the flames that would lick through your body once your mind processed the latest blow, desperately wishing that your spirit could fly away from your frail body once the pain tore you asunder again, and perhaps worst of all, waiting on tenterhooks for the next vicious strike, which you could do nothing to stop. Healing might be easier if there was a way to explain how it felt to bite his own tongue until the metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth in order not to scream, or how it felt to squeeze his eyes shut to prevent the tears welling in them from trickling down his cheeks, because he knew that any cries or shouts would be punished with more blows that he could not withstand. "I was his only son, and sons need to be disciplined more severely than daughters." _

"_That's what Father claimed, but it's not true," Aisha hissed, her fingers tightening around his. "Children should be disciplined fairly. Sons shouldn't be treated more harshly than daughters just because they are sons. That's rubbish." _

"_Sons need to be toughened up more than daughters do," replied Zahir, noting inwardly that even if his father had gotten too rough at times, the basic principle that boys had to be raised to be strong wasn't flawed. _

"_Nonsense." Aisha waved a dismissive hand. "Girls have to suffer through monthlies and childbirth. I assure you that it requires far more strength to survive monthlies and childbirth than it does to live through a battle." _

"_If that comment doesn't illustrate female folly, nothing does," snorted Zahir, rolling his eyes. _

"_If your remark doesn't prove male arrogance, nothing does," Aisha retorted. Her tone softening, she added, "Anyway, Zahir, I owe you an apology for all those times I allowed you to take the lion's share responsibility for schemes that were my idea and into which I tempted you. I can't say that I never should have led you astray, since some of the best moments of our childhood happened because I urged you to disobey Father, but I should have taken the blame. I shouldn't have let you pretend the ideas were yours and that you had misguided me, especially when I knew that you would be disciplined more severely than me because you were a son and not a daughter." _

"_I wanted you to permit me to take the blame." Zahir's throat constricted, so he had to fight with himself to get the words out. "If I could, I would have taken all of your punishment for you, Aisha. I love you far more than I do my own feeble body. Growing up, the sound of defeat for me was the slap of Father's rod beating against your flesh on the other side of the tent. When I was little, that noise announced to me more plainly than anything else could have that no matter how much I surrendered my flesh to be punished on your behalf, I couldn't save you. Of course, I would continue to try and fail, so maybe I deserved to be beaten for my repeated failures." _

"_If anyone deserved to be thrashed, it was me," responded Aisha, her eyes moist. "I was a coward, since I would always hate hearing you beaten for my sake, but I would never step in to attempt to spare your skin as you had tried to protect mine. The rod cutting into me later was just a contemptuous reminder that I had sacrificed your hide to spare my own, and even my own cowardice wouldn't spare me. Every blow I received, I earned for betraying you." _

"_You didn't betray me," Zahir argued, shaking his head. "Older brothers are obligated to protect their little sisters. That's all I was trying—and failing—to do." _

"_Perhaps," Aisha answered. "Still, it can be said that such moments reveal who we truly are, and the image of you that emerges is far nobler than the one of me is." _

"_We were too young to be faced with such impossible choices." Zahir's jaw tautened. "As such, we cannot be held accountable for our decisions as adults might be." _

"_Maybe." Aisha shot him a sidelong glance before continuing, "You should know that I overhead Father and Mother whispering about you on many evenings. I heard Father talk about how much he loved you and how proud he was to have you for a son. He really was so impressed with your courage, your strength, and your honor. When it comes down to it, he truly did want to guide you on the path of virtue, but, all too often, the only way he knew how to do so was with thrashings. No matter what you believe on the contrary, you have to realize that he was proud of you, but he couldn't find a manner to express that beyond beatings and criticisms." _

_Before Zahir could stutter out a reply, she concluded, "In the end, I think you need to look at what happened to you as more indicative of Father's shortcomings than your own, so you can finally stop blaming yourself for being hit. I also am convinced that you should try to see that Father acted out of weakness and ignorance, not out of malice. If you can feel some sympathy for the cruelties his incapability to convey his love and approval caused him to heap on his children, I think you will ultimately be a happier person." _

"_I'm happy enough already," blustered Zahir. Then, somehow- he couldn't pinpoint how exactly nor did he truly care to do so-they were both laughing so hard that their lungs swelled like bruises against their throbbing ribcages. Nothing was hilarious, but the whoops were less about amusement than they were about pain, anger, loss, and frustration. _

_As the two of them laughed, their guffaws looped together in an eternal cycle that didn't just resemble life but somehow sustained it. They were laughing to remember and forget the horrors they had survived. They were laughing because it was the only way either of them knew to really celebrate this deadly thing called life. _

_When his gaze locked with Aisha's, Zahir finally felt as if his spirit were flying free. At least for now, he was liberated from his own fear. For this moment, he had released his beautiful and terrible fear in laughter. He had released that beloved and hated twin of himself, leaving him confused as to who he truly was without that fear. _

_The fear was no longer his blood, because he had given his fear back to the father who had beaten him, the uncle he had killed, the cousin who had plotted against him, and the knightmaster who had betrayed his trust. _

_From now on, he told himself, he would not be afraid to be angry. He would not be scared to rejoice. He would not be afraid to be a Bazhir, and he would not be scared to be a northerner, either. He would not be afraid to be hated, and he would not be scared of being loved. From this moment forth, he would just be Zahir bin Alhaz without the fear that had lived inside his body since his birth, and he would be proud of who he was. Yet, even as he triumphed in his banished his fear, he knew that it would return to him sometime, because he was alive, and his fear was so terrified of perishing. _

Here, his memory was chopped off abruptly when a jolt raced through his body. Recalling that he was on a ship, Zahir wondered as he opened his eyes if the vessel was sinking.

When he emerged completely from the mist of his memory, he was relieved to discover that the boat did not seem to be pitching about any more than usual, although he was puzzled to find his knightmaster sitting on the side of his bunk.

"I hear from Trevor that you are seasick and that you have been laughing hysterically in your sleep, Squire," remarked King Jonathan as Zahir squinted up at him.

"I'm dying," Zahir rasped, feeling his stomache and feverishness return in full force. "I should never have gotten onto this dreadful ship. Bazhir are supposed to die in the desert, not upon the sea, just as they should be cremated, not buried in a watery grave."

"You're not dying," the king reassured him, squeezing his shoulder gingerly. "Don't be melodramatic."

"Everyone is dying," countered Zahir. "Every breath is one closer to our last, and every moment that passes brings us nearer to our deaths, Your Majesty."

"Fair enough," his knightmaster conceded. "Still, the fact remains that you are not on your deathbed."

Zahir opened his mouth to contest this, but another bout of nausea tore through him, and all he could do was snatch up the washbasin from the nightstand before vomit spewed out of him again. As his now practically empty stomach spasmed as it struggled to heave up anything it could uncover inside it, his throat burned, and shivers ripped through his body, it was King Jonathan who gripped him tighter and held the basin steadily.

After Zahir's body had finished this latest torture, the king wiped his face with a handkerchief and handed him a glass of water.

"I don't want to put anything else in my stomach ever again, sire," mumbled Zahir, humiliated that he had thrown up in front of his knightmaster twice now, and refusing to sip the water.

"If you are vomiting, you must replace the water you are losing, Zahir," King Jonathan educated him sternly. "Since you were reared in the desert, I hope I don't have to explain to you the manifold dangers of dehydration."

Too sick to argue further, Zahir reluctantly sipped the water. To his surprise, the water managed to purge some of the acrid taste of vomit from his mouth, which he supposed was only justice since it was water that had prompted him to throw up in the first place.

"Thank you for caring for me like this, Your Majesty," he grunted to his knightmaster, flushing as he told himself that when he was thinking the worst of King Jonathan, he would remember how the man had tended to him when he was throwing up.

After all, he pointed out to himself, who was he that a king would care to know his name, nonetheless tend to him when he was seasick? Who was he that someone who had a country to govern would bother to try to light the way for his ever-wandering soul? Who was he that the Voice would spend so much time striving to calm the storm within him?

Ultimately, he was nothing more than a wave tossed in a tumultuous ocean, or a salty vapor in a sea breeze. That meant that if King Jonathan cared about him it was as much about who the king was as it was about who Zahir was, and it was as much about what the king had done as it was about anything Zahir had done.

"I should have tended to you like this when my attack made you sick," King Jonathan answered quietly.

"We don't have to talk about that, sire," muttered Zahir, fiddling with his blanket.

"It casts too big a shadow between us not to discuss it, Zahir," responded his knightmaster heavily. "I should never have used our bond against you—Ali Mukhtab would never have done such a thing to me when I was training with him—but seeing you throw up should have been enough to bring me to my senses. However, I was so concerned with crushing your rebellion that I didn't care how much pain I made you suffer, and I am deeply sorry for that."

"It's all right, Your Majesty." Zahir's mouth had gone as dry as a desert, but how could he not forgive the king when King Jonathan was willing to forgive him for similar sins? After all, he remembered the horrid voice in his brain that had whispered to him that it would feel so good to abuse and kill his own uncle in retribution for the man's crimes. He recalled the fraction of his heart that had screamed at him how simple it would be to employ his wrath to exact reparation from Kamal. He remembered the part of his conscience that had hissed at him that killing his uncle in cold blood would even be fair after a fashion, since his uncle had callously murdered his father. He recalled how he had punched Myra in rage when he had believed Aisha to be dead. He remembered how eager he had been to wound someone else just so that he wouldn't be alone in his pain. Yes, he comprehended that evil was never any further than an eyeblink or a heartbeat away, and that it tempted people by appearing to possess all the virtues it lacked. "I know what it's like to become so swallowed in your own fury that you don't even recognize what you are doing."

"My not being fully aware of what I was doing to you doesn't excuse my actions, Squire." Shaking his head, the king sighed. "I owed it to you to be in control of myself and to never injure you like I did."

"Oh, you choked me, sire, but I gave you the noose. You gutted me, but I provided you with the knife. You burned me, but I laid myself across the fire." His lips twisting, Zahir shrugged. "I was the one who allowed myself to care so much about what you thought of me, and, even after what occurred, it still matters what you believe of me. All I really want is to feel worthy, and that's how I feel when you offer me your approval or your affection."

"Zahir, you are a human being, and, as such, you have a tremendous value whether or not I acknowledge that." King Jonathan's blue eyes pierced into him. "If I don't recognize how much you are worth, it is me, not you, who is diminished."

"Are the Hibrus human beings with tremendous values even if you don't acknowledge that fact, Your Majesty?" demanded Zahir, remembering how the king had placed a higher priority on trade with the Tyran merchants than justice for the Hibrus earlier.

"I do acknowledge that the Hibrus are human beings with worth." His knightmaster's tone sharpened. "I sympathize with their plight as much as you do, Squire, but I cannot fix all the problems in the world, and, thus, I need to pick my wars. Also, since I am king of Tortall, the interests of my subjects will always outweigh those of foreigners when I am sorting out my priority list."

Obstinately, Zahir thought that if the king truly did sympathize with the plight of the Hibrus, he would never pretend that he just couldn't see their suffering or hear their cries. However, deciding that he didn't wish to create a new rift between himself and King Jonathan when one divide had finally been crossed, he observed instead, "You mentioned Ali Mukhtab earlier. What was he like, sire?"

"Now, there is a question that I am happy to answer," remarked King Jonathan, his sapphire eyes shining. "Ali Mukhtab was one of the teachers I respected the most, and, in the relatively brief amount of time that I knew him, he influenced me a great deal. From the first time I met him, I had a powerful connection with him, and it seemed like we could communicate without words. He was the kind of leader that I hoped to one day be. He understood the seriousness of life, but, at the same time, he was capable of spotting the humor in every situation. He was fiercely intelligent, but he was so wise that he could comprehend the follies of others. Just by looking at someone, he could bring out the best elements in that individual. When you spoke with him, you always had the impression that he could glimpse all your weaknesses, and that, while he wouldn't tolerate you displaying them, he forgave you for your faults. All in all, a word like special just wouldn't do him justice. I only regret that I was in a very surly stage of my life cycle when I was training under him, and I wasn't always as respectful of him as I should have been. Of course, hindsight makes sages out of idiots."

His knightmaster paused, and then went on, "I never told you this before, Zahir, but part of the reason I chose you to be the next Voice was because you reminded me a bit of Ali Mukhtab."

"Really, sire?" Zahir asked dubiously. "From what you have said, I don't sound anything like him."

"That's because I haven't described the similarities to you yet, Squire," the king informed him dryly. "When I made you chief, the strength of your spirit reminded me of Ali Mukhtab. You burned so brightly that I could imagine you, like him, possessing the resilience and courage to overcome the pain of a terminal illness long enough to instruct someone else in how to be the next Voice. Like him, you value tradition and are proud of your heritage. At the same time, like him, you have shown yourself willing to adapt to northern ways, just as he did when he offered me the chance to serve as Voice after him."

"Once you claimed that I was like you, Your Majesty." As he established as much, Zahir's eyes narrowed. "I can't be like both you and him."

"Of course you can, Zahir." King Jonathan chuckled and squeezed his shoulder. "You can be like Ali Mukhtab, like me, and like yourself all at the same time. That is why I know that you will one day make an excellent Voice."

"Well, that puts no pressure on me whatsoever," grumbled Zahir, wrinkling his nose.

"It's the good pressure, the kind that prevents lazy squires from sleeping all day," his knightmaster said wryly.

"There is no good type of pressure, sire," scoffed Zahir, rolling his eyes. "All forms of stress result in ulcers."

"That might be the most ridiculous theory I've heard from you in quite some time, Squire." The king's lips quirked into a smile.

"It's not my idea, Your Majesty," Zahir replied loftily. "I'm merely quoting all the most learned healers in Tortall."

"Such a statement, of course, is emerging from the mouth of a young man who refused to drink water because he threw up when he was seasick," King Jonathan pointed out dryly.

"I'm not seasick." Indignantly, Zahir lifted his nose. "I'm dying, sire."

"Indeed, Zahir." His knightmaster patted his knee. "I'm planning your eulogy even as we speak."


	34. Chapter 34

Empty Paradise

After what felt like eons of being tossed around on the ocean, but what must have, in reality, only been a stretch of the longest and sickest days of Zahir's life, the frail ship that had, through some miracle, managed to carry them all without sinking reached the wharves of Tyra's capital.

As he stood on the main deck with the rest of the Tortallan delegation waiting for the crew to finish the docking procedures, Zahir huddled under his cloak. Sourly, he noted that it was just his luck that on the day he arrived in Tyra, rain would be pelting from the gray sky onto his shoulders and the vicious sea breeze would be blowing sprays of water into his eyes.

Squinting into the fog that shrouded most of the Tyran buildings, Zahir tried to see homes, shops, and cathedrals in the misty forms. Of course, he thought, now that he was finally near land, it would be impossible for him to get a clear glimpse of it due to the foul weather…

His mind was prevented from offering any further complaints about the weather, however, when the delegation, in order of rank, disembarked the vessel. As he descended the wooden ramp onto the quay with Trevor on his heels, he told himself how wonderful it would be to feel stable soil beneath his feet once again. The immobility of earth was something he had never thought to treasure until the ocean had cruelly deprived him of that constancy.

When he stepped onto the wharf, he was, therefore, dismayed to discover that it swayed under his feet. "Be careful," he muttered to Trevor, reminding himself that docks bobbed in the water they floated upon. "Somebody has been messing with the gravity again."

"You'll never find your sea legs, will you?" Trevor shook his head sympathetically, as, to Zahir's relief, the delegation began to move off the quay.

"I'll end up chopping off my legs before they become sea legs," snorted Zahir, hobbling down the rolling wood of the dock alongside his friend.

"The ocean might like you better if you didn't despise it so much." Trevor chuckled softly.

Zahir opened his mouth to retort that he hated the sea only because the massive, unfeeling body of water had decided to make him nauseous when he had never harmed the ocean in any way, but his protest died in his throat as he stepped onto what should have been a firm cobblestone road and found that he still felt as if the ground were shifting beneath his feet. His brain was too preoccupied with pondering whether he would spend the rest of his life feeling as though he were on a rocking horse to respond to Trevor's nonsense.

He was so focused on the queasiness that was rippling through him again as what should have been solid land seemed to churn beneath his feet that, at first, he didn't notice the dozen young men in livery, or the horse-drawn carriages that were apparently intended to serve as a welcoming committee. Indeed, his attention was only directed to them when the tallest lad, who had the brown hair, dark eyes, and tan skin common among the Tyran people, stepped forward, saying with a deep bow that was copied by the rest of the uniformed young men, "Your Majesty, lords, ladies, and citizens of the fair kingdom of Tortall, my master, Giovanni Medica, bids you all a most cordial welcome to our simple republic of Tyra. On behalf of the ruling council, my master wishes you a profitable stay in our city, which he sincerely hopes you will find pleasure in visiting."

"My people and I are most appreciative of your master's welcome," King Jonathan replied, and Zahir supposed that now they were upon Tyran soil, his knightmaster would be mostly speaking in proclamations, most of which would not actually mean anything. "It is our hope that our visit will not only be profitable to ourselves, but also to your master and the republic he represents."

"Doubtlessly, my master would wish me to assure you that when people of goodwill work together, a profitable outcome is almost always guaranteed," answered the young man who had welcomed them, bowing once more. "My master also wants me to tell you how delighted he is that your delegation has arrived on such a beautiful day."

"His master calls this a beautiful day?" Zahir hissed incredulously to Trevor. "Are Giovanni Medica's windows so fogged that he can't see outside or something?"

"Beauty is relative," whispered Trevor. "Nice weather here probably refers to a day when there is no lightening, and the wind isn't blowing the pouring rain sideways into everyone's eyeballs."

"Well, I'm just grateful that the mountain range that separates Tortall from Tyra ensures that all the rain blown off the sea lands in Tyra instead of in the desert where the Bazhir live," Zahir mumbled back, wondering if the young men who had greeted them wore sunshine-yellow livery because Giovanni Medica wanted to be able to see his servants even in torrential downpours.

"My master hopes to have the pleasure of meeting all of you in person," continued the manservant who had done all the talking for the Tyrans thus far, gesturing at the carriages behind him. "He sent these coaches to transport you to his villa, where he looks forward to having the honor of greeting you himself soon."

"We will be honored to meet your master," responded King Jonathan smoothly, and, gritting his teeth, Zahir asked himself how much longer he could listen to people, in the interest of politeness, dragging out everything. It was really very annoying to be standing right next to carriages with rain soaking through your cloak all because it would be poor manners to do the practical thing and charge into the coaches as swiftly as possible. "We graciously accept his kind offer of transportation."

After that, the liveried men could finally lift them all into carriages. Following a few moments of regulated mayhem as everyone settled themselves into the cushioned coaches, Zahir found himself sitting in a carriage next to Trevor across from two ladies in billowing silk gowns. Through the glass window that allowed him to look outside the coach, he saw the golden ribbons woven through the tails of the white steeds attached to their carriage shining through the fog as the procession began its rather bumpy trip down the cobbled street.

"I am Marietta Kohn," announced an attractive maidservant, who was standing beside the door, while the footman who had lifted them in guided the horses. "As we travel to my master's villa, it will be my pleasure to introduce you to some of the marvels of our city as we pass them. Right now, we are traveling alongside the wharfs of the city, where you will see evidence of our thriving economy in every single good that is loaded and unloaded from the vessels in our harbor."

Looking out through the moist smears on the window, Zahir had to admit that the Tyran docks they were passing were indeed packed with ships, most of which were either being filled with or emptied of goods. His eyes narrowed when he saw that most of the wiry men lugging cargo onto and off the vessels had small, round caps covering the middle of their heads.

"Why do the men loading and unloading the ships wear those hats?" he asked, frowning.

"They are Hibrus," Marietta informed him through pressed lips. "The Hibrus are a rather superstitious tribal people, and one of their more peculiar beliefs is that it is an insult to the gods for their men to roam around bareheaded. As a result, their men always wear those ridiculous caps. Still, despite their quirks, my ever just and compassionate master insists that the Hibrus be treated decently, because, after all, we are all children of the gods. That is why he has funded the building of homes for the Hibru people outside of the walls and has constructed buildings where his cloths can be dyed outside the city, so that the Hibrus, who, historically, have been uncomfortable in cities, can reside comfortably in the outskirts without being left out of Tyra's robust economy. He has also paid for the erection of the Flower Wall, a wall covered with plants that surrounds the city and provides the Hibrus who live outside the city with the merry illusion that they are in the countryside. Truly, the genius and the goodness of our Vox Populi , Giovanni Medica, is unparalleled."

"I see." Thinking that he understood all too well how the official explanation for oppression rarely matched reality, Zahir nodded.

As they moved past the quays and into the heart of the city, Marietta went on, "Tyra has no crime, as you will discover. We have peace and prosperity here. Citizens have plenty of work and plenty of leisure time. Our gardens are renowned, and our goods are among the finest in the world. Our journey to my master's villa will take you past our best shopping street, so you will see proof of that."

"You are lucky to live in such a country," remarked Trevor, ever the diplomat.

"All Tyrans are fortunate to have a Vox Populi such as Giovanni Medica," Marietta replied as they turned down a wide boulevard lined with leafy trees. "He has created the incredible perfection all around us."

As they rode down the thoroughfare full of the exclusive shops that Marietta had promised, they saw luxurious bolts of fabric, porcelain vases, sparkling jewelry, and golden cutlery arrayed in window displays. Beaming, Marietta gestured proudly at the stores, even though Zahir observed that most of the shops were empty.

Past the stores, the villas began, made of shimmering marble and only glimpsed behind ornate, guarded gates. One by one, they passed the grand structures, which were all framed by lush gardens and bubbling fountains.

"Many of our most prominent merchant families reside here," Marietta explained. "One after another, they live in spacious villas. The avenue ends at the grand villa of the Vox Populi."

Not long after that, the most elaborate and most heavily guarded gate appeared ahead. The procession paused as the sentries spoke with the driver of the first carriage. Then, the massive gate swung open, and, ahead, was a lavish villa that sprawled over a verdant landscape of flowers, trees, and shrubs.

The procession pulled up in front of the main doors. "It was a pleasure to serve you," trilled Marietta, curtsying as Zahir, Trevor, and the two ladies exited the coach.

Once the entire delegation had stepped out of the carriages, a manservant thrust open the main doors, and they strode into an opulent entrance hall decorated with elaborate mosaics and clearly valuable pottery.

Zahir barely had time to observe the rich decorations of the entrance hall before a rotund Tyran in flowing olive green robes strode up to King Jonathan, his arms open wide as if to embrace the air encircling the king, shouting jovially, "Your Majesty, welcome to my republic! I am Giovanni Medica, the Vox Populi. Do tell me what you think of my beloved Tyra so far."

"It's gorgeous." Somehow, Zahir's knightmaster managed to open his arms even more expansively than Giovanni Medica's. "We're simply overcome."

"I am seeing this is true by your astonished faces!"Giovanni Medica brought his plump palms together in a resounding clap. "I am hoping that your stay here continues to be pleasant, and I am honored to welcome you to Tyra on behalf of all my people."

"We're flattered that you took the time away from your important business to greet us personally." King Jonathan inclined his head.

"I assure you that no business matters more to me than maintaining good relations between our two magnificent countries," Giovanni declared. "However, I imagine that all of you are exhausted from your lengthy voyage. Therefore, I will have servants escort you to one of the small but perfect villas down the street where diplomatic visitors from other realms frequently stay in comfort. There you will all have time to rest and clean yourselves after your journey. Then, you will all return this evening for a feast in my villa, where you will all have the opportunity to meet with some of Tyra's leading merchant families in a social setting. Tomorrow, once you have settled in, we will discuss business matters, but today, we will relax."

Listening to this exchange, Zahir was barely able to refrain from rolling his eyes in revolted exasperation. Of course, nothing worthwhile would be or even attempted to be accomplished today. No doubt the best image of the speed of the negotiations in the coming days would be the blistering pace of the land tortoise. If that wasn't enough to kill him, the fake smiles exchanged by beings who longed to strangle each other would be.

While he had been making his snide inner commentary, Giovanni Medica had bid them farewell, and a cluster of servants, who must have been hovering just out of sight, bustled forward to lead the Tortallan delegation to the villa in which they would be staying.

Less than fifteen minutes later, the delegation had arrived at the villa. While it was modest considering the neighborhood, the reception chambers were comfortably furnished, the dining area had silver dishes placed on a fine maple table, the kitchen seemed well-stocked, and a garden around the house contained flowering plants and flourishing vegetables and herbs.

The villa was also large enough that everyone of noble birth could have their own room, and the servants and soldiers would not be too cramped. Compared to the bunk he had slept in for the past few days, Zahir thought that the thick mattress piled high with plush blankets in his room was particularly tempting.

Unfortunately, since he had squirely duties to attend to, he couldn't collapse onto his bed immediately. Sighing as he tried not to think about the mattress he wanted to be resting upon, Zahir collected warm water and soap from the kitchen so the king could clean himself after their long journey.

"Ah, thank you, Zahir," his knightmaster said as he entered King Jonathan's dressing room with the soap and water. "Tell me, what do you think of Tyra so far?"

Watching as the king scrubbed his hands, Zahir bit his lip. "Do you want my true opinion, sire?"

"Absolutely," King Jonathan educated him brusquely. "If I wasn't interested in hearing your honest perception, Squire, I wouldn't have asked, and, if I had desired a tactful response, I would have posed the question to one of the many diplomats around here, all of whom are far more skilled at offering political replies than you are."

"I'm a Bazhir, and Bazhir don't fawn or beg, Your Majesty." Zahir shrugged. "Even witnessing those activities makes us feel contaminated."

"Indeed." The king grinned, as he started wiping his face with a towel. "What is the Bazhir assessment of Tyra, then, Zahir?"

Shooting his knightmaster a sidelong glance, Zahir hesitated and then stated, "It's a negative one, sire."

"I thought that it would be," observed King Jonathan dryly. "Just ensure that you keep your voice low when you offer it, then, since we can never be certain if a Tyran spy is lurking."

"To be blunt, the Tyrans have created a paradise within the walls of their city, but it is a hollow one. Their economy mainly profits a handful of merchant families. Did you see those stores, Your Majesty? They were jammed with expensive things to buy, but nobody except Giovanni Medica, his family, the other wealthy merchant families, and their high ranking underlings can afford to purchase the luxuries for sale. Meanwhile, the workers who make their false paradise possible live in misery outside the city walls if they are Hibrus or inside the city walls if they are not." Grimly, Zahir shook his head as he fiddled with a bottle of aftershave on his knightmaster's dresser. "How can anyone enjoy all this splendor knowing the terrible human price that is paid for it?"

"It doesn't surprise me." King Jonathan's keen eyes pierced into Zahir. "They are glad that they are inside the walls, and not outside them, Zahir."

"In other words, they are selfish, not caring who they trample over as long as they can continue to live in luxury." Zahir scowled. "Do I have to attend the banquet tonight, sire?"

"Giovanni Medica invited us all to his feast, Squire," the king reminded him.

"That answers about five questions I didn't ask, Your Majesty," pointed out Zahir, wrinkling his nose.

"Very well," his knightmaster conceded, his lips quirking. "To be more specific, Zahir, you must attend, because, if your absence were noted, it might offend people."

"It wouldn't if you told them I drowned in a puddle, sire," muttered Zahir, who was starting to think that was a viable alternative to enduring an evening with the merchant families of Tyra. Although the members of the governing council of Tyra might have claimed that they were serving their republic, he was too smart to fall for their clever exploitation of semantics. As far as he was concerned, when he envisioned Giovanni Medica and the powerful Tyran merchant families serving their country, he pictured them engaging in activities that bore an uncanny resemblance to the main pursuits on a stud farm.

"Don't be ridiculous." King Jonathan tossed the damp towel he had been using to clean his face at Zahir, who caught it, folded it, and placed it on the windowsill to dry in whatever faint rays of sunlight could filter in through the heavy clouds and the panes. "You need to practice how you conduct yourself at parties, so that when you are knighted, you will know how to behave at social events."

"I already know all I need to about how to conduct myself at social events, Your Majesty," insisted Zahir, sticking his nose in the air haughtily . "Though I disagree with just about all of Lord Raoul's politics, I have to agree with Lord Wyldon that he is an excellent strategist, and his tactic of hiding behind tapestries at parties is a brilliant one I have every intention of emulating when I'm older."

"You will not be cowering behind any tapestries tonight, Squire," his knightmaster stated firmly. "Now, if you are charming at tonight's banquet, you can spend tomorrow exploring the city with your friend Trevor. However, if you disgrace Tortall by forgetting your manners, you will have to be present and silent tomorrow for all of my negotiations with the leading merchant families of Tyra, since you will have demonstrated your dire need for further etiquette instruction."

"Bazhir are not susceptible to bribery or threats, sire." Zahir's tone was stiff as he folded his arms across his chest, even if a part of him did want to do whatever it took to avoid having to sit it on dull meetings, despite the fact that, in this case, what was required was pretending to be polite to beings he would doubtlessly despise as much as he detested Giovanni Medica.

"Perhaps not," answered King Jonathan, his eyes gleaming. "Yet, they do accept rewards and punishments."

"You win, Your Majesty." Defeated, Zahir forced his lips upward into a painfully artificial grin, wondering how he would be able to maintain an expression of such patently fake pleasantry for hours in a row. "I'll be as charming as I possibly can be."


	35. Chapter 35

Kinship and Contamination

Much too short a time later, Zahir found himself standing awkwardly near a refreshment table in Giovanni Medica's banquet hall, pretending to admire a beautiful mosaic of Mithros and the Goddess created from richly colored tiles on the wall behind him. Really, though, he was just looking for an excuse to avert his eyes from all the dancing couples whirling around the room.

Struggling to prevent his brittle smile from slipping into a disgusted scowl, he wondered if the ladies being twirled around noticed how much cleavage their sliding dresses exposed and if the gentlemen doing the twirling realized just how low their palms were slipping on the women they were dancing with…

Of course, he knew that was a stupid question. He was the only person in the room who cared about modesty. Everyone else just cared about pressing their hot, scented flesh against somebody else's. Truly, the Bazhir prohibition against dancing had never made more sense to him than it did now.

"I see you are impressed by my depiction of Mithros and the Goddess in all their splendor," a voice commented genially, and Zahir, who had hoped that he had blended into the wall enough to go unnoticed by his fellow guests, started.

Tilting his head to see who had addressed him, he felt his heart sink into his stomach when he spotted his host standing to his right. "Did you create this mosaic for yourself, then, sir?" he asked, arching an eyebrow, because, as far as he could discern, it was foolish of the Vox Populi to take credit for a masterpiece that he had not made. "You must indeed be quite the artist."

"I am hearing you now, and you have wit." Chortling, Giovanni Medica slung an arm around Zahir's shoulder, and, reminding himself that tugging out of the leader's grasp was rude, Zahir remained motionless and prayed that the man would remove the arm soon.

As Zahir wistfully imagined washing off the invisible dirt of the Vox Populi's touch, Giovanni Medica went on, "Of course, I am too busy running my business and my country to make such masterpieces for myself. However, I do commission the artwork and am the patron of the man who created this mosaic, so, you see, I am truly responsible for the creation of this masterpiece. Mithros and the Goddess will recognize the effort I put into glorifying them in this mosaic, and they will honor me for it in the afterlife, just as they will the man whose hands actually formed this work of art."

"It takes an artist to see the talent required for the creation of such a gorgeous mosaic," answered Zahir, resisting the temptation to point out that, among the Bazhir, a depiction of the gods would be regarded as edging perilously close to blasphemy. In the Bazhir mindset, creating images of the gods meant the danger that the images, rather than the gods themselves, would be worshipped, and idolatry—mistaking for the divine that which wasn't—was just about the greatest offense a Bazhir could commit. "Likewise, it would take a very learned man to appreciate such a cultured poet as you had reading earlier this evening during dinner."

"You enjoyed the poems Beniamino Levi read this evening?" inquired Giovanni Medica, beaming as if he was the one who had written the poems.

"Yes, sir," Zahir replied, happy that he could be completely truthful about this. "The poem in which he compared love to a herd of wild horses was particularly touching."

"Oh, then you must tell him so yourself." Before Zahir could respond to this, the Vox Populi had shouted across the packed banquet hall, "Come here, my dear Beniamino. You have a deep admirer of your poetry that you must speak to."

As a man with more salt than pepper in his beard and his hair approached, Giovanni disappeared into the colorful, dancing throng, leaving a flushing Zahir to mutter at the arriving poet, "Err, I'm Zahir ibn Alhaz, and, with all due respect, not exactly a _deep_ admirer of your poetry…"

"Don't worry." The poet laughed, making his potbelly rise and fall in amusement. At this sight, Zahir felt some of his tension ebb. It was hard to be uneasy when listening to a genuine chuckle. "I know that my esteemed patron's most considerable artistic talent is that of hyperbole, and that our beloved Vox Populi could convince a deaf person to say they admired my poetry."

"That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy your poetry." Zahir hoped that Beniamino would see that he was not just being polite; he was also being earnest. "I particularly liked the ghazal you wrote in which you compared love to a herd of wild horses. It was very moving, and not many people can use the refrain as well as you did."

"You aren't Tyran," remarked Beniamino, the way his olive black eyes penetrated Zahir making it apparent that he was making an assertion rather than seeking information. "Tyrans only know sonnets, terza rimas, ottava rimas, barzellettas, canzones, rispettos, and capitolos. I can write in all those forms, of course, and the Tyrans are quite fond of my work when I do. Sometimes, though, I have the urge to write in forms that are more reflective of my true heritage. The Tyrans pretend to admire my work when I do that, but the truth is that they don't understand what I am trying to do at all. They wouldn't know what a ghazal was if I wrote it on my forehead."

"Well, I wouldn't know a rispetto from a capitolo," Zahir mumbled, determined not to provide the other man with the impression that he was a connoisseur of poetry, as that, doubtlessly, would end in his humiliation. "I'm Tortallan."

"Mmm." Beniamino nodded his head slowly as though he were drifting into a nap. "You may call yourself Tortallan, but you aren't as pale as the rest of the foreigners. That tells me that you are a Bazhir, and, because you are a Bazhir, you had no trouble recognizing a ghazal when you heard one."

"I'm a Bazhir and a Tortallan." Proudly, Zahir lifted his nose in the air as he established as much. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"I would agree." The swarthy skin around Beniamino's eyes crinkled as the poet added, "I suspect that you and I have more in common than you could possibly imagine, lad."

"I doubt it," snorted Zahir, staring across the banquet hall at a florid-faced Giovanni Medica, who was boxing the ears of a servant who had accidentally spilled a glass of wine all over a lady's silken gown. "It's very unlikely that you'll be able to guess anything significant about me in only a few minutes' conversation."

"Let me try," insisted Beniamino. Then, before Zahir could answer, he gestured at slices of pork that were temptingly arrayed on beds of lettuce and tomatoes on the table behind them. "For instance, I, like you, wouldn't dare to eat that pork."

"Because it is unclean?" Zahir shot the man a sharp glance.

"Exactly." Beniamino bobbed his head in confirmation. "That's also why I, like you, would never eat frog's legs or chocolate covered ants. That's also why I, like you, must clean myself before eating. For me, like you, consuming such things would be a violation of my belief system."

"In that case, you aren't Tyran," stuttered Zahir, gaping at the poet.

"Oh, I am Tyran in much the same sense that you, my boy, are Tortallan," Beniamino educated him, smiling crookedly. "Of course, I could claim that I am more Bazhir than I am Tyran, and that you are more Hibru than you are Tortallan. After all, as people, the Bazhir and the Hibru are closely linked by blood and custom. Indeed, it was only a few centuries ago that your people broke away from the Hibrus, because the first Voice of your tribes believed that the Hibru scriptures had been corrupted, while the Hibru priests accused him of being a false prophet. In time, the people who sided with your first Voice ended up traveling across the mountain range that presently divides Tyra from Tortall and settling in the desert with him, and those who still believed in the Hibru priests remained in the swamps of what is now Tyra. The differences between the Hibru and the Bazhir peoples are significant, but, even after all these centuries, they are really nothing more than estranged brothers."

"You're a Hibru!" exclaimed Zahir, comprehending at last, astonished that Giovanni Medica would invite a Hibru to his banquet or sponsor a Hibru poet.

"Keep your voice down," Beniamino hissed, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. Fortunately, everyone was too absorbed in their own conversations or dances to pay any mind to Beniamino and Zahir's discussion. "As far as the Tyrans are concerned, I am not a Hibru anymore. To their knowledge, I have converted to their religion and left the old one of my people behind. Instead of having scriptures in the scared language of the Hibrus, I go to Tyran cathedrals and listen to their priests read their scriptures in the language of the fallen Thanic Empire. Before I eat, I mumble their prayers instead of Hibru ones. I observe their day of rest instead of the Hibru one. If I say that I have converted to their religion and at least display a surface conformity to their beliefs, the Tyrans do not harass me."

"That's probably because leaders like the Vox Populi don't want to contemplate all the fashions in which one can claim to belong to a particular religion while not acting as though one does," sneered Zahir, his gaze fixing on Giovanni Medica, whose hands were clamping Marietta's breasts as she bent over to pour her master a goblet of wine, even though he had a wife and children. Then, focusing a glower on Beniamino, Zahir continued scornfully, "I can't understand why you would want to pretend to be a Tyran when you could be a Hibru, instead."

"I have a talent with words given to me by the gods," murmured Beniamino, unfazed by Zahir's contempt. "The gods intended me to do more than menial labor my whole life, and I couldn't do that unless I acted like a Tyran."

"It's cowardly to forsake your people for earthly status," Zahir snapped, feeling contaminated just by standing next to such a spineless man. "The gods will punish you for it, especially because you were probably supposed to use your talent with words to pass your heritage onto Hibru children."

"Whether I betrayed my people is a matter of opinion," countered Beniamino, his tone quiet. "After all, being Hibru involves more than religion. Hibru is a race and a culture in addition to a religion. Outsiders might not comprehend that and might believe that it is possible to give up being Hibru. However, anyone who is born a Hibru will understand that one can never stop being a Hibru. That knowledge along with the little, inconspicuous things I can still do that mark me as a Hibru show that, when it comes down to it, I am still a Hibru, no matter what the Tyrans imagine on the contrary."

"All that needless deception should rip at your conscience," Zahir spat, his eyes narrowing disdainfully. "At least among the Bazhir, to tell a lie is to disgrace yourself."

"Generally, I would agree." Gravely, Beniamino nodded. "Yet, I would argue that deception is justified if it helps my people, and my living a lie might just be what is required to free my people."

Remembering how duty had demanded that he leave behind his own people in the desert and thinking of the aphorism that it was almost always the one who was closest to the emperor who assassinated the emperor, Zahir tapped the refreshment table pensively. "I think that I am beginning to understand your point."

"If you understood it completely, would you help me and the rest of the Hibrus?" asked Beniamino, cocking his head inquiringly.

"Yes," confirmed Zahir grimly, because blood was always thicker than water. Even if the Bazhir hadn't split from the Hibrus centuries ago, he would have felt a kinship to the Hibrus. Both groups of people understood what it was like to be oppressed, to have suffering bred into their bones, and to have defiance pound in their veins. That meant that, in the truest and weirdest possible way, the agony of the Hibrus was his own pain. "Tomorrow I might be touring the city with a trusted friend. You can contact me then. After all, if we spend too long together, someone who isn't completely drunk might get suspicious. I mean, there is only so much we can say to each other about poetry. "

"Your point is well-taken," Beniamino responded, selecting a pastry from a tray and biting into it. "Mmm. If there is one thing that Tyrans can do properly, it is bake cannolis. You should have one, for they are delectable."

Deciding to trust Beniamino's taste buds, Zahir scooped up a cannoli. The hard shell, sprinkled with powdered sugar, crunched satisfyingly in his mouth, and his tongue exploded with happiness when it met the sweet cream inside the pastry.

"Delicious," he commented when he had finished the pastry in two gobbles. For a moment, all he could think about was the tasty desert he had just eaten. Then, as his eyes riveted on Giovanni Medica, whose palms were now under Marietta's dress, Zahir observed slowly, "Kohn, like Levi, could be a Hibru surname, couldn't it?"

"It could be," answered Beniamino, his gaze following Zahir's. "Our dear Marietta was born Leah Kohn, but she changed her name to Marietta when she converted to the Tyran religion. One could say, however, that the Hibru blood in her was what made her too prideful to change her full name to please the Tyrans, and that the only reason she lets the Vox Populi touch her like that is because she believes it will one day benefit her true people."

"You Hibrus are everywhere," muttered Zahir, shaking his head. "From the way that Marietta spoke so admiringly about the Vox Populi earlier, I would never have envisioned her betraying him."

"To play her deadly game, Marietta, like me, must be very good at pretending to be something she is not even as she must never, for one moment, forget who she really is," said Beniamino in a near whisper. "Peace be with you, Zahir ibn Alhaz. I hope we meet again soon."

As Beniamino slid into the dancing masses, Zahir echoed, "Peace be with you."

After that, Zahir had much to contemplate as he studied the mosaic on the wall. Even after the party had finally drawn to a close, his mind was still so focused on unraveling the mysteries of his conversation with Beniamino that he blinked in alarm when his knightmaster rested a hand on his shoulder as the Tortallan delegation walked back to the villa they were staying in.

"Sire?" Fighting to get his heart beat back under control, Zahir looked up at the king, praying that his knightmaster knew nothing about his plotting with Beniamino.

"Giovanni Medica told me that you were quite witty and charming when you spoke with him, Squire," King Jonathan informed him, and Zahir assured himself that there was no way that the king could possibly know what he had discussed with Beniamino.

"When you're drunk, it's easy to find people charming and witty, Your Majesty," scoffed Zahir, glad that he could act natural and insult Giovanni Medica at the same time. Deception worked best when one didn't have to lie at all, since it was difficult to feel too contaminated over a deception that wasn't, technically, a falsehood, and it was guilt at lying that tended to betray an otherwise perfect deception. He hated having to resort to deception, but there were times it was better to do so than drown in the truth.

"The fact that he was drunk might have explained why he also seemed to harbor under the delusion that you were shy." King Jonathan grinned, so that his white teeth flashed against the blackness of the night. "Still, since you managed to convince Giovanni Medica that you are charming, you are free to explore the city with Trevor tomorrow."

"Thank you, sire." Automatically, Zahir expressed his gratitude. Then, before he could stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth, he demanded, "Did you know that the Bazhir are related to the Hibrus?"

"I did." The way the king frowned down at Zahir left him with the disconcerting sensation that the man sensed all too well what had transpired between him and Beniamino. "While you are in Tyra, Zahir, you would benefit from keeping in mind that you are Tortallan, not Hibru, and your duty to your realm far outweighs any ties of kinship you may feel bind the Hibrus to the Bazhir."

"My people have been in the same position as the Hibrus, Your Majesty." Zahir's jaw clenched. "I don't see why I shouldn't have some compassion for their plight."

"Have all the compassion in the world for the Hibrus, Squire." Even in the dark, his knightmaster's eyes lanced into him. "Just remember that you are more than just a Bazhir. You are Tortallan, and you cannot antagonize the Tyrans by helping the Hibrus when Tortall needs us to mend the strained relationship between ourselves and Tyra in order to restore proper trade between the two countries. You may feel all the compassion for the Hibrus that you like, but you should be aware that taking any action on behalf of the Hibrus would bring you very close to the dangerous territory of treason."

"I could never betray you or Tortall, sire," protested Zahir vehemently, his cheeks burning.

"Remember that when you are tempted to do so, then," King Jonathan ordered him coolly, and the man's calmness only increased Zahir's ire.

"I'll never be tempted to commit treason, Your Majesty, no matter how much you insult my honor like this, because betraying you would just prove that you were right to doubt me all along," snarled Zahir, gritting his teeth.

Still, as he and his knightmaster continued their walk back to the villa, Zahir found himself thinking that treason might have been a dirty word, but, then again, his tribe even when his father was a child had been renegades. That, as far as he was concerned, meant that he was a Bazhir before he was a Tortallan, no matter what the king claimed on the contrary, and a Bazhir who turned his back on kinsmen was worth less than a rotten raisin.

All things considered, then, he didn't know whether he put a higher priority on loyalty to his country or to his kin. Maybe, he noted dismally to himself, treason was in his blood. Perhaps that was his true inheritance from the desert.


	36. Chapter 36

Drowning

"I hope you don't mind losing a glorious day with the politicians," Zahir commented to Trevor the next morning as they sat upon the ledge of a bubbling fountain in a marketplace thronging with customers haggling with vendors, children running around and getting under everyone's feet, women gossiping, and men exchanging boastful stories. Looking around the market, Zahir thought about how happy he was that so far the mackerel sky hadn't chosen to rain upon them yet.

"I don't," Trevor reassured him, grinning as he stared up at the naked, perfectly proportioned marble statues of a handsome man and beautiful woman with water shooting out of their mouths and fingers who stood proudly in the center of the fountain. "After all, one of the main reasons why I want to be a diplomat is to travel, and I wish to travel because I want to see the world. Tomorrow I will have time enough to sit in on official conferences."

"I hope I won't," muttered Zahir, thinking of the king. "Even good people I like turn into bores or monsters when politics are involved. Trevor, you are much too wonderful a person to be wasted upon politics."

"Decent people have to go into politics despite the monsters," Trevor countered, smiling slightly. "Otherwise, there will only be monsters in politics, and how wonderful a being would I truly be if I permitted that to happen?"

"Politics will corrupt you." Zahir shook his head. "Like everybody else in government, you will end up sacrificing your honor to achieve your goals."

"I hope not," answered Trevor. Pointing at a magnificent stone cathedral whose belltower pierced through the heavy, gray clouds like a gigantic needle, he added, "I can pray about the issue in there if you would like. It's the Cathedral to Our Lady Mother, and I confess that I would not complain about discovering if the inside is as gorgeous as it is rumored to be."

Zahir, who had always felt discomfited entering the Mithran chapel in the royal palace for Sunday services as a page, grunted, "We can go inside the cathedral if you want."

"Stellar," replied Trevor, grabbing onto Zahir's wrists, tugging him to his feet, and dragging him across the packed cobblestone street to the cathedral.

As the two of them approached the grand cathedral that shadowed the marketplace, they spotted a message carved into the stone beside the gigantic oak doors which declared that the cathedral's construction and maintenance had been funded through the generous donations of the Medica family.

"I'm so glad that the Medica family makes a habit of announcing how devoted to the gods they are, because I would have no way of knowing that they were otherwise," Zahir snorted, rolling his eyes at the etching in the stone.

"It is a bit ostentatious, isn't it?" Trevor agreed cheerily, his eyes glistening with amusement. "Still, we can't judge the Medica family based on that sign. After all, while it may seem like they only poured their wealth into this cathedral to enhance their earthly standing and possibly to attempt to bribe their way to a favorable destination in the afterlife, we can't know for sure that is why they did it. Perhaps they were genuinely motivated by the desire to glorify the gods and to give back some of their riches to their fellow citizens. Since we can't see into their minds, hearts, and souls like the gods can, we cannot pass judgment upon them in this matter."

"If they were just doing it to enhance their status in the eyes of mortals and to try to bribe the gods, that would be evil," scowled Zahir.

"Yes, it would." Trevor nodded somberly. "This is an instance where the same action could be driven by two entirely different emotional states, one of which is worthy of salvation and the other of damnation. In this case, there is no middle ground, but only the gods can know the truth, and so we have to assume that the Medica family was motivated by only the purest of incentives."

"You are being far fairer to them than they deserve," remarked Zahir derisively.

"It's best to leave the justice to the gods in this situation," Trevor stated, giving Zahir a friendly nudge with his shoulder. "Look at it this way, Zahir. If the Medica family only wished to enhance their status in the eyes of men, then they have already received their reward, and so they won't be getting one in heaven. Similarly, if their objective was to bribe the gods, the gods will not be tricked, because they cannot be conned with impunity by merchants or anyone else. The gods always get the last laugh on mortals who believe that they have the power to outsmart the gods."

Biting his lower lip, Zahir considered Trevor's argument and conceded after a long minute, "I suppose that you are right."

"Of course I am." Playfully, Trevor bowed. "Shall we enter?"

"Very well," Zahir mumbled, and the two of them stepped into the arching nave of the cathedral.

As they walked through the entranceway, Trevor paused to dip his finger in a bowl of water that had been blessed by a priest and to trace the sign against evil over himself with his damp finger, while Zahir averted his gaze from a practice that would always strike him as foreign no matter how many times he witnessed it performed.

Mainly because it provided him with an excuse to miss Trevor's peculiar act of devotion, Zahir gazed around the cathedral. When he did so, he found that his breath left him in an awed gasp, and his lungs seemed to feel that it was irreverent to allow air to flow back into his body, for he suddenly couldn't inhale as he stared around him.

The ceiling of the cathedral seemed to stretch up to the Divine Realms. The stained glass windows tinted the marble floor crimson, rose, mauve, violet, azure, emerald, and orange. Every faint ray of sunlight that filtered through the colorful windows was transformed into a rainbow.

Each window depicted a god or the tale of some human who had devoutly served the gods. Every window told a story, he thought, and just walking around the cathedral would offer a person a basic religious education. Of course, religious art ran the risk of being idolatrous, but that was so hard to remember here…

The smell of incense wafted through the air from the altar, and Zahir couldn't help but imagine that it might just be the scent of the divine. A sacred, eternal hush seemed to permeate the cathedral, and it was hard not to envision that the cathedral was somehow both inside and outside of time. Here, it felt like one could just remain motionless while the chaotic world continued to go on all around the sanctuary.

It was only when Zahir caught sight of a woman kneeling before a statue of the Goddess, her fingers dancing across her prayer beads, and her lips moving rapidly in a silent, fervent prayer that he glowered, coming out of his trance.

"Worshipping statues is very wrong," he hissed to Trevor. "I don't know why so many non-Bazhir make a habit of doing so."

"Non-Bazhir don't worship statues." Trevor chuckled softly. "Zahir, do you honestly think that I fall on my knees and beg the statue to come to life and save me? Do you reckon that when I am in distress, I appeal stone and mortar to come rescue me?"

"You're mocking me." Angrily, Zahir pressed his lips together.

"No." Gently, Trevor clasped his shoulder. "I never mock the sincere religious beliefs of others. However, I do try to correct people when their perspectives of other groups might be incorrect."

"My perception isn't incorrect." If anything, Zahir's lips tightened further. "It definitely looks like that woman is worshipping a statue."

"Appearances can be deceiving," Trevor informed him quietly. "The woman is praying to what the statue represents, and merely using the statue as a means of focusing her mind. If something brings someone closer to the gods, how can it be evil?"

"I think it draws a person closer to idolatry rather than to the gods," Zahir established through gritted teeth.

"Well, it's just another case where an action could be motivated by two totally different internal states, then, isn't it?" Trevor pointed out calmly. "The appearance of praying to a statue could either be praying to the gods or it could be idolatry. Only the gods can know which it is, and so only they can judge."

"Humph," grunted an unconvinced Zahir, folding his arms across his chest.

Trevor hesitated, and then said, "I'm going to say a quick prayer to the Goddess, and then we can leave."

"Fine." Zahir offered a short, irascible nod, and turned away in disgust as Trevor knelt before a statue of the Goddess.

Trying to ignore the fact that his friend was praying to a statue behind him, Zahir riveted his gaze on the religious scene on the far wall of the cathedral. He was about to note inwardly that he much preferred the geometric designs favored by religious buildings in Persopolis to the paintings of the gods lining the cathedral when he found himself being enthralled by the picture on the wall.

It was a depiction of the ancient flood that Mithros and the Goddess had sent to drown the whole world except for two animals of every kind and a devoted family. The waves in the painting appeared to be moving, and he could practically taste the salt on his tongue. He could feel himself being tossed mercilessly about by the frothy waves in the stormy ocean that suddenly had covered the whole world. He could hear the water slamming into his eardrums. He could feel his mouth and nose tightening as he struggled not to drown. He could feel his own legs failing him as he desperately kicked toward a shore that didn't exist. He could feel his own hands stretch helplessly towards the heavens, awaiting a salvation that would never come. He could feel all this because he knew exactly what it was like to drown, and it was this terrible understanding that had made him seasick on the journey to Tyra…

_Zahir could remember that day as clear as if it were yesterday, even though he did the best he could to blot it from his memory. He was almost five-years-old—just a week away from his fifth birthday, in fact—which in his young mind made him practically a man. _

_A man, as far as he was concerned, didn't need to stay away from oases for fear of drowning. After all, oases were so small compared to the vastness of the desert, and they couldn't be too deep, given how little rain fell from the sky in his homeland. _

_That was why he first put his toe in the water. He felt the compulsion to prove that he wasn't afraid of this mysterious blue substance. Then, because the sensation of the cool water upon his hot skin had been so glorious, he waded in up to his shins, then up to his knees, then up to his waist, and then finally up to his chin. _

_The bed of the oasis was muddy, squelching delightfully beneath his toes. Unfortunately, it was also treacherous. As graceful as he was, Zahir miss-stepped, found his head submerged underwater, panicked when liquid burned up his nose and mouth, and lost his footing entirely. _

_Wildly, he cast his feet about, searching for the muddy bottom. His toes couldn't touch anything but water, and he could feel himself sinking, weighed down by his own clothing, which he had foolishly not removed. _

_His arms flailed about, reaching toward the cerulean heavens, but the only blue they made contact with was the water of the oasis. His head pushed frantically toward the surface, yet he couldn't reach it. Somehow, he knew that he would die here, no matter how hard he fought to live, and perhaps he would perish only an inch away from the marvelous air he could never breathe again. That inch could have been a league since he could never complete the journey…_

_From a distance, he could hear someone shouting his name. At first, he assumed that the Black God was summoning him to court, where he would be punished for all of his sins. However, when he saw two strong arms plunge into the water and snatch at his wrists, he recognized vaguely that this wasn't the case. As he was dragged back to shore, his head above the water at last, it occurred to him that he wasn't dead yet. _

_When he was dumped unceremoniously onto the sand, the rough grains of which had never felt so tender against his skin, powerful hands slapped his back. Water gushed out of his lips and nostrils, wetting the ground around him. _

_Zahir finally realized that the hands of his savior were those of his father's when a furious voice penetrated the water still swimming in his ears to snap, "What have I always told you about going near oases?" _

_Tears of relief at being alive mingling with tears of horror at what had just happened to him welled in Zahir's dark eyes. All he could do was shake his head miserably and sputter. _

"_Answer me, boy." His father's hands clutched his shoulders hard enough to bruise, and he felt as though water was rattling around inside his skull as he was shaken vigorously. _

"_Not to go near them," Zahir whispered, the tears, to his shame, trickling down his cheeks now. _

"_You're lucky that the sheep needed a drink," snarled his father, and, for the first time, Zahir noticed the flock of sheep sipping from the far side of the oasis. "If I hadn't been around, you would have drowned, son." _

"_I'm sorry, Father." Zahir tasted salty tears on his tongue, and his whole body heaved with sobs. He hadn't wanted to die. Indeed, he had only wished to prove that he was a man. Similarly, he hadn't intended to incite his father's ire. All he had really been hoping to do was earn his father's approval. Everything had gone so nightmarishly awry when it was supposed to go so perfectly, and all he could do now was cry out his terror and shame. _

"_I ought to tan your miserable hide for disobeying me and endangering your life like this." His father's words were gruff, but the firm hands that pressed him against a muscular chest were surprisingly gentle, and the heart that he heard pounding in that strong chest told him that his father had been just as scared as Zahir was that he was going to die. _

_He was loved, and he was safe in his father's arms, he assured himself, as his father went on, "Yet, since I just went to so much trouble to save your skin, I don't feel like beating you within an inch of your life even if you deserve the thrashing of your life." _

"_I'm sorry, Father," repeated Zahir, burying his head in his father's chest. "I'll never do anything like this again." _

"_You'd better not," his father barked. "If you do, I assure you that you'll be learning how it feels to be truly sorry." _

"_I—I just wanted you to be proud of me." The traitorous comment spilled from Zahir's lips before his brain could halt it, and his cheeks blazed with embarrassment at his own weakness as he recognized what he had said. _

"_You're my only son." Briskly, his father shoved him away. "I won't be proud of you if you kill yourself foolishly. If you must leave me without an heir, at least die bravely instead of stupidly." _

"_Yes, sir." Ducking his head as though he had just been backhanded, Zahir murmured, "I—I love you, Father." _

_More than anything, Zahir longed for his father to say that he loved Zahir, too, or at least to embrace him again. Yet, all his father did was snort, "Actions speak louder than words, Zahir ibn Alhaz. If you love me, obey me and honor me enough that you do not need to tell me you love me. A defiant son is a disgrace to his father, and a son who shames his father does not love his father." _

_Listening to his father's reprimand, Zahir tried to be grateful for the man's words of wisdom, but he couldn't manage it, since part of him still wanted to be told that his father loved him. Yes, his father had hugged and lectured him, but was a simple declaration of love from his father impossible for the man to give? After all, an uncomplicated, unambiguous statement of his father's love was all that Zahir had ever really wished to receive. _

"Zahir." Trevor's hand clapping his shoulder lightly yanked him out of the memory he was drowning in. "We can go now."

Absently, Zahir nodded and trailed his companion out of the cathedral. It was only when they had twisted through the congested marketplace and were heading down a scruffier sidestreet filled with the small shops and cloth factories that made the city run that he roused himself enough to ask, "Trevor, do you know that your father loves you?"

"Absolutely," responded Trevor, as they turned down another lane, which contained worker housing that made it apparent just how tremendous the poverty of the average Tyran was in relation to the wealthy merchants living in villas near the Medica family.

Trying not to remind himself that he had not even seen what life outside the city walls was like, Zahir pressed, "Would he love you even if you defied him?"

"If my father's love of me was contingent upon my obedience, he would have hated me ever since I was a toddler." Trevor chortled, and Zahir wished that he could join in with his friend's mirth.

Unfortunately, he could only mumble, "It must be nice to be raised by a father like that."

"Zahir, any father who makes an effort to rear and provide for his offspring deserves to be honored," remarked Trevor delicately, shooting Zahir a sidelong glance. "That being established, respecting your father doesn't mean that you have to loathe yourself. I think that when you accept that you are worthy of being loved despite your flaws, you will be at peace."

Before Zahir could snarl that he did not loathe himself, he was distracted when a shiver rippled down his spine. Feeling abruptly as though his every movement was being watched, he hissed to Trevor, "Someone is tailing us."

Trevor had the presence of mind not to twist his neck around to check if this were the case. "I don't sense anything," he muttered back.

"I feel it," Zahir insisted tersely, glad that one of them had received combat training. "Let's lead whoever it is on, and then double back and see who it is."

After that, they picked up their pace slightly, weaving in and out of alleys and staying in the shadows of buildings. This close to the wall surrounding the city, the neighborhood was so rundown that, as far as Zahir could discern, introducing a Stormwing to the area would be constituted as gentrifying it. Water and waste collected in the gutters and pooled in the cracks between cobblestones, while the buildings looked old and dilapidated. Occasionally, they heard the scuttling of rodents and increased their speed.

They turned a corner onto a short block. Ahead, three dark alleys radiated out and were swallowed up in blackness. Perfect.

They didn't have to talk. Both of them began to run, darting into the middle alleyway. Quickly, they climbed up to the top of a building and lay down on the roof. From this vantage point, they would be able to see whoever was following them.

Below them, they saw a maidservant in Medica colors who looked familiar move forward, gazing around her with every step.

"It's Marietta," Zahir said. "Come on."

Without bothering to ensure that Trevor would follow him, Zahir jumped to an overhang below and then leapt nimbly onto the ground directly in front of Marietta. A second later, Trevor landed more clumsily beside him.

With a yelp, Marietta jumped back in fright.

"Looking for us?" Zahir inquired, smirking.

Attempting to disguise her involuntary display of fear, Marietta coughed into her sleeve. "Ah, yes, as a matter of fact, I was." Her tone and eyes speculative, she added, "I did not expect to have to follow you to this section of the city."

"We're just exploring some of the wonders of your lovely city," answered Trevor, smiling pleasantly.

"Let me assure both of you that there are far better sights to be seen," Marietta said. "This neighborhood is a curious choice on your part."

"We got lost," Zahir told her brusquely. "What can we do for you?"

"I am to deliver an invitation to the two of you," explained Marietta. "The Vox Populi is hosting a reception tomorrow evening and wishes you both to attend along with the rest of the Tortallan delegation, to whom he has already extended the invitation and received warm acceptance."

"We accept with delight," Trevor stated smoothly.

"I will inform the Vox Populi." Marietta curtsied. "Now, no doubt, you wish to resume your…sightseeing."

With another curtsy, Marietta spun on her heel and bustled off. As soon as she was out of earshot, Zahir muttered, "An invitation could have been sent to our villa, especially since the rest of the delegation has already accepted Giovanni Medica's offer."

Trevor opened his mouth to reply, but he never had the opportunity to do so. Caught up in their conversation and relief that it was only Marietta who had tailed them, they had lowered their guard. Their attackers came from behind, using rocks to knock both Zahir and Trevor off their feet. After that, Zahir felt like he was drowning in darkness as a black hood was thrown over his head, and, from the muffled screams beside him, he could only assume that Trevor had received the same treatment.

Instinctively, Zahir rolled away from their assailants and rose to his feet in one fluid motion, prepared to fight but not drawing his sword. The hood was fastened in a way that he couldn't untie at the present, but that wasn't a problem. He could defend himself and Trevor in the darkness if he had to. Then again, he thought, he was on a diplomatic mission to Tyra, which meant that his knightmaster would probably frown upon him brawling unless he absolutely had to do so.

Perhaps it would be better if he just allowed himself and Trevor to be kidnapped. After all, if the situation worsened, he could resist later and save himself and Trevor if necessary.

It was too late to fight now, anyway, he realized, as he felt himself being shoved into a cart and heard Trevor thump down beside him.

"Do you have any ideas?" Trevor rasped through his hood.

"We might as well discover who kidnapped us and why," Zahir whispered. "I think that you might be about to see another side of Tyra."

"I'm not sure I'll like this side as much," Trevor snorted, "but thanks for trying to comfort me, Zahir."

After that, both of them were silent as the cart bounced them along. Finally, the bumpy ride ended with a final jolt, and they were dragged out of the cart and pushed into what Zahir supposed was a building. Then, the hood was wrenched off his head, and he took a deep breath of fresh air, or, rather, what should have been fresh air, but was actually dank and not much of an improvement over the stuffy air behind his hood.

"That's right," a masculine voice advised in a tone edged with sarcasm. "Take a deep breath of the wholesome country air of Giovanni Medica Estates."

Zahir couldn't see who spoke, because a bright pea green light was in his eyes, and the rest of the room was in deep shadow. Trevor was beside him, his chin up as he tried to blink out the light, and Zahir tensed, as if for a blow, ready to defend himself or his friend the instant his threat assessment level of his kidnappers racketed upward again.

"Relax. We don't want to hurt anyone wo is friends with Beniamino. This is just the only way we can talk to you without Giovanni Medica hearing about it," the voice continued dryly, and Zahir realized with a start that he and Trevor had been kidnapped by Hibrus. Marietta must have been sent ahead to gain a fix on their position. "Oh, and, for the love of Mithros, stop using your Gift to make such a bright light, Eli. You'll blind us all."

The vivid green light went out, and now the only illumination came from tiny, uncovered windows carved in some sort of wooden structure. Water pooled on the hard-packed dirt floor, and Zahir supposed that indicated that the ceiling leaked, which was a real problem in a country as rainy as Tyra.

A Hibru male emerged from the shadows. He was tall and slender. Energy seemed to be coiled in his muscles and emanated from his gestures and his pale eyes. The rest of the group remained in the darkness.

"I apologize for the method," the Hibru who appeared to be the leader announced, nodding at the hoods. "We can't exactly issue nice personal invitations the ways our beloved Vox Populi can, and we need to talk to you without any prying eyes or ears, since we have a proposition for you."

"Who are you?" demanded Trevor, who obviously regarded kidnapping as one of the few offenses which justified rudeness.

"My name is Hiram," the Hibru leader answered. Hooking a foot over the rail of a chair, he brought it over to sit astride it, facing them. "I am head of the Hibru resistance against the Vox Populi and the oppressive governing council. My face and name are well-known to Giovanni and his supporters, so there is no need for concealment on my part. However, my compatriots are less notorious and will remain hidden from you. The only thing you need to be aware of us that there are many of us, and we do not all reside beyond the wall."

"Some of your sympathizers in the city include Marietta and Beniamino," Zahir cut in. "What do you want with us?"

"Why should we help you when you kidnapped us?" Trevor put in, his ivy eyes scorching Hiram.

"If you wish to resolve your trading dispute in your favor, it would be prudent for you to align yourself with the winning side," retorted Hiram.

"The winning side?" Arching an eyebrow, Trevor folded his arms across his chest. "Are you seriously going up against the merchant families and expecting to be victorious?"

"We will be victorious because we have to win." Hiram spoke with without rage and without bravado. "What never fails to amuse me is when beings underestimate the power of desperation. Anyway, we are not nearly so weak as you think. After all, it was Hibru sailors who mutinied, disappeared in the ocean with the cargo your merchants ordered, and who will return with armed merchant vessels to aid in the Hibru rebellion."

Spreading his arms, Hiram spat, "This is how we live on the other side of the wall. This is a typical dwelling in which two or three families will be crammed. Disease is rampant in our quarters. Many of our children die before their second birthday, and the ones who survive have no hope of getting better than a menial, unpaid position of mucking streets or dying cloths unless they forsake their heritage."

"I'm sorry, but we have nothing to do with your troubles," Trevor replied, shaking his head.

"Ah, of course not." Hiram's lips twisted bitterly. "You just profit by them, since you buy the cloths that are dyed by our enslaved hands."

"Are you going to insult us or ask for our assistance?" Zahir broke in before Trevor could respond to this challenge.

"That puts me in my place, that does." A strained grin creased Hiram's taut features. "Here is our request. We need certain important information stolen from Giovanni Medica's office tomorrow night during his banquet. Since Giovanni has taken an interest in our dear Marietta, she will be able to distract him while you steal the important information we require."

"You want us to steal from Giovanni Medica?" Trevor actually rolled his eyes. "You can forget that idea, I assure you, because it is never going to come to pass, my friend."

"What do you want us to steal, anyway?" Zahir asked, thinking that, even if Trevor didn't, he wanted to help the Hibrus all he could.

"A small scroll from his top drawer," stated Hiram. "It contains all the information that will guarantee our success. With it, we will be able to take over the government in a short time span, and, as a token of our gratitude, Tortall will receive all of its cloths and will be greatly esteemed by the new Hibru government."

"Go on," Zahir urged.

"We also know that we have enough Hibru guards stationed at the reception to capture all of the important government officials at Giovanni Medica's party." Hiram's jaw clenched. "If you don't help us, there will still be a revolt, but it just won't be a bloodless one, and, when we are in charge, your trade dispute will not be settled favorably."

"I'll help you," agreed Zahir grimly, elbowing Trevor in the ribs when his friend opened his mouth to protest.


	37. Chapter 37

Author's Note: In this very important public service announcement, I would like to note that, while I, being an unoriginal individual, based the Hibru culture on Hebrew culture, I didn't do so with the intent of offending anyone. Also, as with the Bazhir and Islamic culture, I had to alter quite a few things in order to fit the demands of my plot and the fictional universe I was writing in, so this fic does not reflect reality, and, as such, will not get you out of a World Religions course. Everyone should definitely do their own research before arriving at any conclusion based on my fantasy fanfiction.

By the way, since I am an equal opportunity offender, it should be noted that Tyra is based on Renaissance Italy, which, of course, makes the Tyrans based on medieval Catholics. (I am a devout Catholic, though, and so my portrayal of them isn't allowed to offend anyone…)

King and Pawn

"Please tell me that you only agreed to steal from the Vox Populi in order to trick the Hibrus into releasing us," Trevor hissed in Zahir's ear as soon as the two of them were safely ensconced in Zahir's bedroom. They had been escorted by Hiram's men to the wall, which wasn't covered in flowers, surrounding the city, and then had hurried through the capital back to villa the Tortallan delegation had been assigned to.

"I don't lie," Zahir replied crisply, lying down on his comfortable mattress. "I gave my word that I would help the Hibrus."

"You are not morally obliged to keep promises that you make to kidnappers, Zahir," Trevor reminded him, flopping down on the bed as well.

"I promised the Hibrus that I would help them before I was kidnapped," answered Zahir, his tone flat. "In fact, the friend I made the promise to probably arranged for me to be kidnapped."

"Well, that sounds like a charming and loyal friend," muttered Trevor, rolling his eyes.

"It was the only way he and his compatriots could speak with me about their plot." Zahir shrugged. "Sometimes the ends justify the means."

"Perhaps," Trevor responded, his gaze skeptical. "Still, in this case, I'm not sure that you have the authority necessary to promise the Hibrus Tortallan help, especially if that aid takes the form of stealing from the leader of Tyra."

"I'm not promising Tortallan aid," retorted Zahir. "I'm promising my own help, since I'll be the one doing the stealing."

"While you are here, like everyone else in the Tortallan delegation, you represent not just yourself, but also our entire country," Trevor pointed out levelly. "If you steal from the Vox Populi, all of Tortall will be seen as robbing the Tyran leader."

"Maybe it's good for all of Tortall to be perceived as stealing from the Tyran tyrant," Zahir snapped, grabbing a pillow. "You heard Hiram, Trevor. If we help the Hibrus overthrow the Vox Populi, the Hibrus will resolve our trade dispute favorably. We can save the Hibrus and benefit our merchants at the same time."

"Only the king has the authority to entangle our realm in another country's rebellion." Sighing, Trevor shook his head. "This is a situation where the king alone is fit to decide what is best for his kingdom. It's our duty to explain to him what happened today, and leave the ultimate choice of what to do in his hands."

"What if his hands crush the Hibrus?" demanded Zahir, his own hands tightening into fists around the pillow in his grasp.

"Our responsibility is to Tortall, not to the Hibrus, however much we may empathize with their difficulties," Trevor stated softly. "Besides, I'm not certain that we can trust your friends if they make a habit of resorting to violent methods such as kidnapping in order to achieve their goals."

"You don't know what it's like to be born into a people with a history of being oppressed, Trevor," Zahir snarled, resisting the temptation to hurl the pillow at Trevor's ignorant head. "You have no idea how it feels to be raised on a diet of pride and shame in your heritage. You don't have a clue how much it hurts your heart and strangles your spirit to realize that even though your people fought with everything they had, they still lost the battle for freedom. You don't understand just how degrading it is to be treated like vermin just because of your race or your culture."

Even though Zahir had spoken with a furious contempt, Trevor refused to take umbrage. "Yes, I don't understand," he agreed, his manner as mild as if they were discussing the weather. "The fact that you do is your greatest strength, Zahir."

"My greatest strength?" Zahir chuckled scornfully, the blood pounding in his ears so loudly that he could barely hear the bitter words pouring out of his lips. "The fact that you would say that when that knowledge is actually my greatest weakness proves just how little you comprehend. Of course, like a typical arrogant northerner, that lack of understanding doesn't prevent you from judging me just like you believe that you can pass judgment on the Hibrus from your comfortable position well above their misery. Since your government will listen to your complaints, you figure that all governments will hear petitions from their people. It never enters your mind that maybe the only way that some people can get their government to pay any attention to them is through violence. Similarly, it never occurs to you that perhaps the only method by which some people can attain a government that actually cares for their welfare instead of oppressing them is through revolution. Since you have the privilege of being able to use words to solve your problems, you condemn those who have to fight for the right to speak."

"I'm obligated to tell Lord Conan about our adventure today," remarked Trevor delicately after a pause. "Doubtlessly, he, in turn, will wish to inform the king."

"Doubtlessly," Zahir spat, all acid.

Shooting Zahir a sidelong glance, Trevor suggested, "Perhaps you should speak to your knightmaster about what happened before Lord Conan has a chance to do so."

"I'll not betray the Hibrus." Zahir pressed his mouth together in a resolute, thin line. He could see that Trevor was trying to offer him the opportunity to preserve his relationship with King Jonathan, but honor mattered more to him than being on good terms with his knightmaster. Even if the Hibrus were going to be betrayed anyway, he wasn't about to be the traitor.

"I see." Grimly, Trevor nodded. "I will do what I must, Zahir."

"As will I," asserted Zahir, his chin lifting stubbornly.

The pair of them were silent for a long moment, and then Trevor said with a slight wobble in his voice, "I sincerely hope that we can still be friends after this."

"We're too close to let stupid politics divide us." His lips quirking, Zahir reached out to clasp Trevor's hand. Even though he had never felt his anger flare so hotly against Trevor as it had earlier in this conversation, he also knew that the other boy was a friend that he would treasure far more than he did Joren, Garvey, or Vinson. While Joren, Garvey, and Vinson all brought out the worst in Zahir, Trevor had never revealed himself to be anything less than a positive influence upon him, and, in fact, had taught him valuable lessons about forgiveness. One friend like Trevor, he thought, was worth fifty of Joren's caliber.

Feeling his throat constrict, he went on awkwardly, "Both of us are just trying to do what is right, as we see it, and there's no crime in that. I mean, I can't even really accuse you of doing wrong when you are just serving your king as any northerner would. When it comes down to it, I can't blame you for being raised a loyal northerner any more than I can fault myself for being reared as an independent Bazhir. We are both just honoring our different cultures, and there is no shame in that."

"I'm relieved that you perceive it in that light." Squeezing Zahir's hand gently, Trevor grinned. "After all, it would be really tense being jammed into our crate-sized room on the return voyage if you were determined to give me the cold shoulder."

"I'm sure that you'll have to endure worse trials in your years as a diplomat," Zahir teased.

"Indeed I will," confirmed Trevor, chuckling. "One of those trials doubtlessly will be finishing the book on addressing Yamani nobles that Lord Conan expects me to complete reading by this evening, so he can tie my tongue into several knots when he quizzes me on all their exotic titles. Addresses of nobles aren't the most fascinating things to learn about other cultures, in my humble opinion. Of course, that's what I should be doing now that we are back from our little adventure."

"Now I know why you were praying in the cathedral earlier," Zahir snickered, as Trevor left his bedroom.

Once the door shut behind Trevor, Zahir sighed and glanced around his chamber for something to occupy his mind with, since he didn't want to lie on his bed, waiting for his knightmaster to summon him about the Hibru plot, which would inevitably happen as soon as Lord Conan informed King Jonathan about it. His eyes alighted upon a chess set arrayed on a small table beside his window, and he walked over to it.

Absently, he scooped up the white king. As his fingers stroked the smooth ivory, he imagined that it was the cold, pale-skinned King Jonathan. Matching his knightmaster with a chess piece made him wonder which one best represented him.

Since he was a warrior to the marrow of his bones, Zahir's gaze automatically focused on one of the two ivory knights serving the white king. Just as he was about to pick up the knight, however, he frowned and stayed his hand, deciding that he wasn't an ivory knight, after all. When it came down to it, he wasn't a knight of Tortall. He couldn't move forward and backward, he couldn't jump over other pieces, and he wasn't designed for executing forks.

No, in the final analysis, he was a mere pawn only capable of moving one painful square forward at a time, vulnerable to attack until he finally managed to reach the far side of the board, where he could finally be promoted to the status of knight. Of course, even when he was elevated to knighthood, he would still be nothing more than a glorified pawn who would have to travel wherever the king ordered. Even a promoted pawn could only attack when commanded to do so by the king, and even a glorified pawn could be killed by a king who saw all pawns as expendable.

No matter what happened, he concluded, he would be King Jonathan's pawn for the rest of his life. He might earn new titles or powers intended to distract him from that fact, but that didn't make it any less true.

If he was King Jonathan's pawn, though, why did his eyes center upon an obsidian pawn, and why did he wonder what exactly would transpire if a black pawn dared to challenge the might and majesty of a white king?

He didn't know how long he contemplated that question as he studied the chess set before there was a sharp rap on his door, and bracing himself, Zahir called, "Come in."

A manservant entered, announcing, "The king wants to see you in his study."

Wrinkling his nose, Zahir nodded. Then, feeling as though he were marching to the gallows, he walked down the carpeted corridor to King Jonathan's study. When he reached the door of the office, his misery only heightened when he spotted his least favorite maid, Myra, leaving the room.

As they brushed past one another, Myra jeered, "I hope that you're up to your neck in trouble."

"Well, I pray that you'll take a long walk off one of Tyra's many piers," Zahir fired back, glowering at her. Then, as he entered the king's study and shut the door behind him, even though he recognized that he should probably strive to keep the upcoming exchange as non-confrontational as possible for as lengthy a period of time as he could, he couldn't resist asking, "Did you bring Myra to Tyra just to torment me, sire?"

"No, Squire," King Jonathan educated him from one upholstered armchairs situated near the blazing fireplace. "I had hoped that relations between you and Myra might have improved after you intervened to defend her from Musad ibn Salim in Persopolis."

"That would be a vain hope, Your Majesty," replied Zahir, his mouth twisting. "Myra still believes me to be a brute, and I still think she is the most annoying maid I've ever met. I could save her from a pack of Stormwings and a dozen spidrens, and we'd still loathe each other."

"I see." Waving at the plush armchair opposite him, the king said, "Please be seated. I had Myra bring up some tea and biscotti for us."

"Ah, then she has finally done some good in the world," Zahir mumbled, as he obediently settled himself upon the indicated furniture, alarm bells clanging inside his head the entire time. His knightmaster must be trying to catch him off-guard for an attack about plotting with the Hibrus by offering him smiles and treats. However, he would not fall into such an obvious trap, he warned himself sternly, even as he felt his body being relaxed by the warm fire and the soft cushions swallowing him.

"Have a biscotti," King Jonathan continued, beaming, as he selected what appeared to be a long, hard cookie. "They are a truly delicious type of twice-baked almond biscuit."

Remembering Master Oakbridge's lectures about it being ill-mannered to refuse food that had been brought out mainly for your consumption, Zahir tentatively reached out for the biscotti. As he removed one of the biscuits from the silver tray placed on a little willow table between the armchairs, King Jonathan, who was dipping a biscotti in a cup of tea, advised, "If I were you, Zahir, I would dunk my biscotti into my tea. You don't want to break your teeth on one of the biscotti."

Once Zahir had dipped his biscotti in his tea and nibbled on it, his knightmaster inquired gently, "Is there anything you would like to tell me, Squire?"

"No, sire." Taking care not to scald his tongue, Zahir sipped his tea, noting inwardly that he certainly did not want to tell the king about his dealings with the Hibrus.

"Very well. I will rephrase my question." Pensively, King Jonathan tapped his fingers against his mug. "Is there anything you feel like you should inform me of, Squire?"

"No, sire," repeated Zahir, observing mentally that this wasn't a lie, because, no matter what his knightmaster thought on the contrary, he personally did not feel like he should betray the Hibrus even if that meant keeping important information from the king.

For a moment that spun out into an eon, the king scrutinized Zahir with disappointment and sorrow clear in his gaze. Although his mind was convinced he was doing the right thing by not betraying the Hibrus' trust, his heart felt like he was betraying his knightmaster's trust and doing the wrong thing.

As a result, he found himself ducking his head, even though he had no cause to feel guilty, as King Jonathan commented softly, "Zahir, I understand that after I misused the power being Voice affords me over your mind, you still may have difficulty trusting me, and I respect that however much it pains me to realize that. If you don't trust me, you are at liberty to conceal your thoughts and emotions from me. That being established, you are still my squire, which means that you have a duty to Tortall and to me. I need to trust that you will approach me with any information that you gather which might have an impact on how I choose to run my country. After today, I'm not certain that I can rely upon you to do that."

Part of Zahir longed to burst out with an apology for breaking faith with his knightmaster, because, as someone who viewed his honor as his most valuable possession, the last thing he had wished to do as a squire was make King Jonathan feel he was anything less than trustworthy. However, reminding himself that, as his father would say if he were still alive, sorry was the most pathetic word in any language, since it never changed anything, he pressed his lips together defiantly and refused to apologize.

"I shouldn't have to depend upon Trevor to tell his mentor that my squire had been kidnapped and that my squire was planning on involving himself in a rebellion against the government of a foreign country we are currently negotiating in," King Jonathan continued, his tone sharpening slightly.

"If you knew about what happened already, Your Majesty, why did you bother browbeating me about it, anyway?" Zahir flared up, taking refuge in a righteous indignation that was preferable to the surges of remorse rippling through his veins.

"I had hoped that if you were stupid enough to agree to steal from the leader of Tyra, you would at least have the nerve to tell me about it," his knightmaster snarled. "Nobody can claim that I didn't provide you with enough opportunities to do so."

"It's not stupid, sire," Zahir protested heatedly. "I promised the Hibrus that I would steal a scroll from the Vox Populi's study, and I have every intention of fulfilling my pledge."

"You aren't obliged to honor your word to the Hibrus," the king stated brusquely. "Since you were a captive when you made the promise, it was made under duress, and, thus, is invalid."

"My promise to be your squire was made under duress, Your Majesty," snorted Zahir. "Does that invalidate it in your opinion?"

"I did not abduct you, which the Hibrus did, in case you had forgotten that minor detail." King Jonathan glared at him. "It would be most imprudent of you to ally yourself with the sort of lowlifes who had no qualms about kidnapping you and Trevor."

"They had no choice, sire," Zahir pointed out tersely, itching to throw his mug of hot tea in his knightmaster's face. "That was the only way they could meet with us."

"You can't place your faith in people who organize mutinies on ships and prevent Tyran cloths from reaching our merchants, Zahir." Dourly, the king shook his head. "Actions like that could have sparked a war between Tortall and Tyra. That alone is enough to show that the Hibrus you are dealing with are traitors to their country who don't care how many innocent lives they endanger."

"The Hibrus aren't traitors." Zahir's spine stiffened, as if King Jonathan had insulted him personally.

"They are plotting to overthrow the Vox Populi," countered his knightmaster impatiently. "If that isn't treason, nothing is."

"The Hibrus don't see themselves as being Tyran just as my ancestors would have died before they called themselves Tortallan," scoffed an affronted Zahir, lifting his nose in the air. "If the Hibrus are traitors for resisting a government that is bent on destroying them, then my entire tribe for generations back was comprised of nothing but traitors, sire."

"That is quite beside the point, Squire." Briskly, the king waved a dismissive hand.

"It's not beside the point," insisted Zahir, scowling. "The only reason you were interested in becoming the Voice, Your Majesty, was because it was the only way to get my people to stop killing northerners who dared to venture into the desert. If the Bazhir hadn't been such fierce fighters, you would not have felt any compulsion to learn about their heritage before attempting to rule over them in the only fashion that you really could. Only people who are a threat receive attention or respect. To this day, I've met many a northerner who assumed I was a savage on account of my race, but not one of them has ever suspected me of being a weakling because I was a Bazhir. Just as salvation for the Bazhir only came through bloodshed, so, too, is violence the only answer for the problems of the Hibrus."

"If you think I'm about to violate the rules of diplomacy by condoning a rebellion against the leader of a foreign country I am visiting, I don't know where your wits have gone begging, Zahir." King Jonathan's blue eyes pierced into him. "Since the Hibrus broke the rules of diplomacy first by abducting you, no Tyran will fault you for promising under duress to steal from the Vox Populi, but if you actually attempt to act upon your pledge, you would be abetting the Hibrus in treason and shattering the rules of diplomacy in the process."

"Sire, Giovanni Medica doesn't deserve to rule." Zahir's jaw tautened intractably. "He enslaves the Hibrus."

"He also pays for cathedrals to be built and maintained, funds schools, sponsors poets and artists, and employs many of Tyra's citizens," responded his knightmaster in a frigid tone. "Of course, even if he did none of those things, I still would have no right to determine whether he was fit to rule his country, especially since he can claim he was elected by a republic instead of inheriting a monarchy."

"After what he has done to the Hibrus, he deserves to overthrown by them," observed Zahir caustically. "He doesn't treat them with any compassion at all, but I suppose if one is lugging around one hundred- fifty extra pounds like he is, it is easy to be overcome by compassion fatigue. Perhaps that will vanquish him if the Hibrus can't."

"You certainly will not be helping the Hibrus defeat him," the king told him sternly. "If you do that, you will be imperiling the peace and the trade negotiations between ourselves and the Tyrans."

"I would be helping the trade negotiations and the peace between ourselves and the Tyrans if the rebellion I involved myself in was successful," argued Zahir. "The Hibrus promised they would give our merchants the cloths if I aided them and the revolt worked."

"It won't succeed, Zahir, and you must accept that now," King Jonathan declared somberly. "The Hibrus will be crushed, and the wisest thing you can do is distance yourself from them."

"It's not fair." Obstinately, Zahir lifted his chin. "The Tyrans shouldn't be allowed to abuse the Hibrus so."

"Squire, it would be wrong for us to force our notions of justice upon the Tyrans, just as it would be wrong for them to do that to us." Once again, the king's voice had softened with understanding, although his eyes remained unyielding. Obviously selecting his words with care, he paused for a moment and then resumed, "The situation with the Hibrus is heartbreaking, yes, and it is a hard one to walk away from, but that's what we must do."

"I know I can't solve all the world's problems, but I can't walk away from a blatant case of injustice and oppression, either." Zahir shook his head defiantly. "If I ignored the cries of the Hibrus, I would be as much a cause of their suffering as Giovanni Medica."

"I admire your compassion and thirst for fairness." His knightmaster spoke gingerly. "However, I am a king, and being king means that I must look after the welfare of my people, instead of going off on a crusade whenever the ruler of another country violates the human rights of their subjects. As my squire, you must comprehend that I must temper my idealism with pragmatism in order for my plans, which are genuinely intended to help people, to become reality rather than wistful daydreams that will never actually be of any use to anyone. That pragmatism isn't a lack of compassion or a desire to permit injustice to occur, no matter how much it may sometimes seem like it is."

"Your Majesty, you must understand that the Hibrus feel like my people," answered Zahir simply. "Their cause feels like mine. It calls to me like nothing I've ever felt before."

"Zahir." King Jonathan pronounced his name gently. "Everything that you think you have found in the Hibrus, you already have. You are a Bazhir. What you need is distance and a little time for reflection."

"I don't need to reflect." Irked that the king could misunderstand him when he used such plain words, Zahir bristled.

"That is your decision," his knightmaster conceded. "Still, you will have plenty of time to do so, because you will not be leaving this villa until we depart from Tyra. I would hope that you would not dream of disobeying me and involving yourself further in the revolt, but I would not wish you to experience the temptation to do so when the consequences of you giving in could be very dire indeed."

"That's cruel, sire." Zahir didn't even want to think about how crazy he would go locked up inside a villa while a rebellion rattled the city around him.

"You'll be perfectly comfortable here, and you won't be inconvenienced by the rain you complain so much about," King Jonathan replied firmly. "Now, Squire, I want your word that you will not involve yourself any further in any plot to overthrow the Vox Populi."

"If you don't trust me, Your Majesty, it doesn't matter what I promise," muttered Zahir, arching an eyebrow.

"Just give me your word, Zahir," commanded the king quietly.

"You have my word," Zahir whispered through numb lips, defeated.


	38. Chapter 38

Defiance and Destruction

When his excruciatingly long discussion with King Jonathan finally concluded, Zahir hurried back to the sanctuary of his bedroom, even though he did not comprehend why he was so anxious to return there when, doubtlessly, he would be sick of being trapped in there soon. As soon as he arrived in his chamber, he collapsed on his bed, and took several deep breaths to prevent himself from hyperventilating. Once he had calmed himself somewhat and had ensured that there was some air to fuel his reeling brain, he allowed himself to reflect upon what had just transpired.

King Jonathan, he thought as blood pounded against his eardrums, had just forced him to promise that he would not help the Hibrus, and a Bazhir did not break his word. A Bazhir would die rather than be foresworn and would carve out his own tongue before speaking a falsehood.

Yet, he had also sworn to the Hibrus that he would assist them, and, so, no matter what he did, he would be betraying and hurting somebody. Worse still, ties of kinship bound the Bazhir and the Hibrus, and no decent Bazhir abandoned his family.

It wasn't fair, he lamented to himself as he smashed his fist against his forehead in frustration, that he was shoved into a situation where no decision was the right one, and that really was a prime example of being caught between a rock and a hard place. In fact, the dilemma that he was faced with would be enough to drive anyone into insanity or depression. Really, it was remarkable that he hadn't committed suicide yet. Indeed, perhaps the only reason that he hadn't done so was because even that would end in his disgrace.

Since he couldn't be loyal to both his knightmaster and the Hibrus at the same time, he would have to choose between them. Pressing his lips together, he noted inwardly that the Hibrus were in a far more dire plight than King Jonathan was. Besides, the king had more beings to turn to for aid than the Hibrus did. That meant that he would have to honor his promise to the Hibrus at the expense of his word to his king.

"I'm a traitor now," he muttered, his lips curling up with disdain for himself, his knightmaster, and the world for reducing him to such depravity.

Tears pricked at his eyes like daggers as he realized the depths to which he had plummeted. Once, he had believed that it was possible to be honorable. Now he saw that when loyalties conflicted, it was impossible not to betray yourself and those you cared about. When he had polished his weapons as a page and daydreamed about how he would be the most steadfast and courageous squire in Tortallan history, he could never have imagined being in a situation where he was forced to be a coward and break his word to someone.

His father and Lord Wyldon had all spoken about honor as though it were something that was either present or lacking in a particular person or action. Neither of them ever treated honor as though it were a virtue that could appear on a spectrum. Certainly neither of them had ever admitted the possibility that an individual or a behavior could be simultaneously honorable and dishonorable. Their uncompromising perspective had shaped his own rigid stance on honor, but now he couldn't help but think that in a world of so much gray, perhaps black and white shouldn't be the only two color classifications that existed in his mind.

Of course, maybe he was just trying to justify his own failure to live up to the high moral standards that had been hammered into him since he had emerged from the warmth of his mother's womb. After all, when he closed his eyes, he could clearly see Lord Wyldon glowering at him and rapping out that a knight's first duty was always obedience to the Crown. No doubt Lord Wyldon would be apoplectic if he heard that Zahir was even considering defying the king, especially in an important matter of state, but Lord Wyldon couldn't understand just how subconsciously anathema obedience to the Crown was to a Bazhir in whose veins roared the independent blood of renegade forefathers.

Still, disobedience had never been a virtue his father had strived to instill in him. In fact, he didn't even have to shut his eyes in order to hear his father's voice ringing inside his head: _"Actions speak louder than words, Zahir ibn Alhaz. If you love me, obey me and honor me enough that you do not need to tell me you love me. A defiant son is a disgrace to his father, and a son who shames his father does not love his father." _

Feeling nauseous knots in his stomach that perfectly mirrored the sickness in his heart, Zahir discovered that it was all too easy to change his father's words to suit his present circumstances. _Actions speak louder than words, Zahir ibn Alhaz,_ he thought. _ If you love your knightmaster, obey him and honor him enough that you do not need to tell him that you love him. A defiant squire is a disgrace to his knightmaster, and a squire who shames his knightmaster does not love his knightmaster. _

Zahir swallowed hard, as his lungs and throat tightened, making it impossible for him to breathe. For a long, terrible moment, he couldn't drive the echoes of his alteration of his father's comment from his mind. Finally and ironically, it was the recollection of a remark King Jonathan had made to him on the voyage to Tyra that loosened his throat and lungs, allowing him to breathe once more, and that untied the knots in his stomach: _ "Zahir, you are a human being, and, as such, you have a tremendous value whether or not I acknowledge that. If I don't recognize how much you are worth, it is me, not you, who is diminished." _

The king's words didn't need to be tailored to fit the circumstances; they just had to be applied. Zahir was a human being with a brain and a conscience of his own, and, in the end, he had to make his own choices. Even if his knightmaster and all of Tortall disagreed with him, he had to do what he thought was the right thing. In this case, that was keeping his promise to the Hibrus. His honor wasn't to be found in blind obedience, but rather in doing what he perceived as the best, most moral action in any given situation.

Of course, that wouldn't spare him from feeling as though his heart had turned to ashes when he contemplated those who would be injured by him acting as virtuously as he could. In this case, he didn't think that Common or the ancient language of the Bazhir had words powerful enough to convey just how sorry he was to betray his knightmaster's trust, and he suspected that, for the rest of his life, an apology to King Jonathan would be the constant refrain in his head.

Staring at the pawn and king he had been fiddling with earlier, Zahir noted bleakly that he was about to discover what happened when a pawn challenged a king. As he bit his lower lip hard enough that the metallic taste of blood flooded his dry mouth, he observed dully that perhaps it was just impossible for a black pawn to obey a white king, because the two of them had been born so different…

Torrents of rain didn't ask for permission before they assailed the ground, drowning a hundred furred creatures cowering in burrows, Zahir thought, wishing he could offer this pathetic apologia to his wronged knighmaster. Locusts didn't dream of ruin before they descended upon lush fields any more than sandstorms considered the plants and animals their winds would bury, and sometimes a bee—oh, how Zahir wished that he could have been better to King Jonathan—would die of its own baffled sting.

A sharp knock on his door interrupted his despair enough that he was forced to call out dismally, "Come in."

"You look as though you just saw a ghost or just became one." Trevor clucked his tongue sympathetically as he sat down on Zahir's bed. "I hope I didn't get you into too much trouble, because that was never my intention."

"It better not have been." Zahir forced himself to snort derisively. "After all, I could never sink so low as to be friends with tattletales. Besides, I don't need you to get me into trouble when I have a knack of getting into it all by myself, thank you very much."

"Of course I would never wish to impugn your skill at landing yourself in a mound of trouble." Trevor grinned for a moment, and then stated more seriously, "Still, I had hoped—perhaps foolishly—that you wouldn't be in trouble at all. By the looks of it, though, the king cut out your heart and made you eat it."

"Not exactly." Zahir decided that even if he couldn't keep his promise to his knightmaster, at least he could be fair about what had transpired between them earlier in the evening. "I mean, we exchanged words, and some of them were heated, but he didn't start the conversation angry at me. In the beginning of our talk, he just wanted me to explain what happened with the kidnapping, and it was only when I refused to that he got cross with me. Still, it wasn't as if he yelled at me the whole time. I think he tried to explain his view of things as gently as he could, although he never really likes anyone challenging his authority as I seem to have the bad habit of doing, and he listened as patiently as he could to me when I said what I thought, which maybe is all that you can ask of any teacher. Unfortunately, I just wasn't persuaded by his arguments, just as he wasn't by mine."

"As I expected, King Jonathan refused to entangle us in the rebellion." Trevor exhaled gustily, his features grim.

"Yes," Zahir confirmed, pressing his palm against his forehead. "Worse than that, he made me promise that I wouldn't involve myself any more with the revolution, and then, as if my word wasn't good enough, he confined me to the villa to ensure that I wouldn't be tempted to do so."

"Is your word good enough?" Trevor demanded, his eyes narrowing. "For some reason, I can picture you sneaking out to steal from the Vox Populi during tomorrow night's banquet."

"I don't know whether to accuse you of being a mind-reader or of having too low an opinion of me," mumbled Zahir, flushing to the roots of his dark hair.

"Neither is true," Trevor answered, smiling slightly. "I just know you very well. Anyway, if you are indeed planning on doing such a thing I hope that you will let me help you."

"Why would you want to assist me in doing something you believe is wrong?" asked Zahir, his forehead furrowing.

"I'm not certain it is wrong, and, if I were, I wouldn't do it," Trevor murmured. "The truth is that I spent much of this afternoon and evening reflecting on our conversation, Zahir. I think that you made some intelligent points. One of the reasons that I always wished to become a diplomat was to bring peace and justice to as much of the world as I could, which means that, in good conscience, I can't turn away from the oppression and unfairness that reigns in Tyra alongside Giovanni Medica. I admire the non-violent approach to solving conflicts between people, but there are times for talking and times for doing. Perhaps the situation in Tyra has escalated to the point where only actions can resolve anything, or maybe my hot, youthful blood has just been roused by your passion and pain. I don't know. All I know is that I will help you achieve your goal if you will grant me the honor of accepting my aid."

"Lord Conan will be furious at you for setting yourself against the king's will," Zahir warned, even as his heart soared with hope at the idea of Trevor assisting him.

"I can always claim that I thought it better to help you and thereby reduce the odds of your being caught in a rebellion against the Vox Populi than to not aid you and increase your chances of being found out once I could not persuade you to refrain from ensnaring yourself in the revolt," pointed out Trevor, his tone reasonable.

"Politics will indeed ruin you, Trevor." Zahir shook his head at his friend's acumen.

"Political corruption essentially amounts to pushing along your friends, so you, Zahir, shouldn't grumble about it when you are the friend I am pushing along," retorted Trevor. "Now, let's not waste any more of our time discussing frivolities. We need to devise a plan to get you into the Medica villa, allow you access to the Vox Populi's study, and ensure that you have enough time to actually steal the scroll and deliver it to Beniamino or Marietta, although she will probably be busy occupying Giovanni Medica in his bedchamber."

"We should also give me wings while we're at it," Zahir snorted, recognizing for the first time just how impossible his objective was.

"If you have nothing positive to contribute to a conversation, don't say anything at all," chided Trevor. "Anyhow, you might be interested in hearing the strategy I have concocted so far. Since the king wishes for you not to attend the banquet tomorrow night, but does not want to offend Giovanni Medica, he will not retract your acceptance of the Vox Populi's invitation. Instead, when the Tortallan delegation arrives at the door, it will just be claimed that you suddenly took ill and so could not leave the villa. It would be more plausible, I think, if you and I were both sick from some tainted calamari we ate in the market this morning. Since my dear cousin Cassandra, who has always been very concerned with her figure, has taught me how to make myself vomit, I can cause myself to be sick before the feast, rendering it tragically impossible for me to attend. Once the rest of the delegation has been gone for some time and Marietta will have been able to draw Giovanni Medica into his bedchamber, you and I will leave our rooms, climbing down the ivy that conveniently grows on the walls outside our windows. We will proceed down the road to the Vox Populi's villa, walking as though we have never even contemplated doing anything wrong in our lives. When we reach the gates to the Medica villa, we will give our names to the guards, saying that our illness has passed as abruptly as it came upon us. Once we are inside the villa, I will convince the indoor guards to grant us access to the Vox Populi's study."

"A brilliant idea," Zahir remarked wryly. "Now, how do you propose we make the last step a reality?"

"Erm, I happen to have a Gift that, while largely untrained, does provide me with the power to influence the minds of others, which means that I can persuade the guards to admit us to Giovanni Medica's study," explained Trevor, ducking his head.

"There's no need to look depressed when you can make people do whatever you want with your magic," exclaimed Zahir enviously. Then, his eyes contracting as the full implications of what Trevor had said sunk into his head, he asked in a sharper voice, "You haven't ever influenced my mind, have you?"

"No, I haven't and your question was exactly why I looked depressed, Zahir, because the last friend I confided my secret to decided that he never wanted to talk to me or meet my gaze ever again," Trevor informed him softly. "I don't like to tell people that I have such a Gift, because I don't want to make them believe that I am slipping into their brains and compelling them to like me or anything similiar. I also don't enjoy using my Gift. It feels dishonest, and so I much prefer employing wit or genuine emotion to convince others that I am right, but, as I told you earlier, I will do what I must."

"I guess it is difficult having so much control over the minds of others," whispered Zahir, thinking of the mental power that the Voice wielded over the Bazhir. Then, more firmly, he added, "Anyway, I will also do what I must."

It was this assertion that repeated over and over in his brain the next evening as he clambered out of the window of his bedroom, grabbed onto a vine of ivy stretching down the villa's side, and began to shimmy down it, bracing his feet against the wall for support. As he moved through the black, damp air with only a prickly vine to hold him up, he tried not to consider how far beneath him the ground was located while at the same time reminding himself that no matter how much some of the leaves dug into his flesh, he would not relinquish his grip on the vine.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour of climbing down the ivy, his feet touched the ground. Offering a quick, inward expression of gratitude to Mithros, Zahir glanced to his right and saw Trevor awkwardly moving down another vine.

When Trevor had finished his slow journey down the ivy, the two of them set off down the street toward the Medica villa, Trevor commenting under his breath, "When I'm old, I'll blame a vast majority of my bone aches on that climb down that wretched vine, I assure you."

"Well, while you are complaining, be sure to mention that it was your genius that caused you to climb down the vine in the first place," Zahir hissed back as they arrived outside the gate to the Vox Populi's villa.

"What is your business?" demanded one of the sentries stationed outside the wrought-iron gate.

"We were invited to tonight's banquet," Trevor said, nodding politely at the sentinel.

"Names?" the guard asked, his gruff manner suggesting that he was one of the few individuals immune to Trevor's charm.

"Trevor of Marsh and Zahir ibn Alhaz," responded Trevor, smiling. "We are members of the Tortallan delegation."

"Humph," the sentry grunted. "Are you the two members the others told us were sick?"

"Yes." Trevor grimaced, placing a hand against his stomach. "We ate tainted calamari in the marketplace, and earlier this evening, we experienced severe gastro-intestinal distress. However, we are feeling much better now, and we wanted nothing more than to celebrate our restored health with a visit to your master."

"My master will be delighted." Finally, the skeptical sentinel nodded and the guards admitted them onto the expansive, verdant grounds of the Medica villa.

As they strode up the pathway to the villa, Zahir muttered, "That was the easy part."

"The easy part definitely wasn't climbing down the ivy," Trevor mumbled as they walked into the entrance hall, where a pair of guards were on duty.

"We have an important meeting with the Vox Populi," announced Trevor to the sentries in a voice as smooth as silk and as sweet as honey, waving his hands so that a faint, almost invisible olive green glow flared between his fingers and then disappeared. "It would be best if we waited in his study."

"You have an important meeting with the Vox Populi," echoed the sentries in unison, their eyes glazing over. "It would be best if you waited in his study on the second floor four doors down."

Flushed with their victory but taking care not to act suspicious by hurrying away, Zahir and Trevor walked as sedately as possible up the grand staircase on the far side of the entrance hall. However, once he was confident that they were out of the earshot of the guards, Zahir murmured in Trevor's ear, "That trick of yours is quite useful. Is it really too late for me to develop a Gift?"

"I'm afraid that a second after your conception, it was too late." Trevor chuckled as they stepped onto the second floor landing and progressed down an art-lined corridor to Giovanni Medica's office.

As they arrived outside the Vox Populi's study, Trevor's amusement died, and Zahir felt the fear he had been trying to ignore all night churn inside him. His palms sweaty, he reached out and twisted the handle only to discover that the door was locked. Not exactly astonished by this fact, he fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a hairpin that he had stolen from Myra earlier that day.

Although his fingers were clammier than he would have liked, Zahir was able to unlock the door without much difficulty. A minute later, he was slipping into the study through the newly opened door.

"I'll stand sentry for you outside," Trevor told him.

Nodding, he shut the door silently and tiptoed over to the desk. Once there, he took a deep breath, acknowledging that by breaking into the Tyran leader's office and stealing a scroll of valuable governmental information he was about to dive into an ocean of insanity that he wouldn't be able to swim out of for a very long time if he was fortunate and that he might drown in if he wasn't. Deciding to take the plunge anyway since self-preservation obviously wasn't an area in which he excelled, he pulled out the top drawer and removed the scroll the Hibrus had described for him.

As he tucked the scroll into his pocket along with the hairpin and crossed over to the door, Zahir thought that stealing from Giovanni Medica and betraying Jonathan of Conte wasn't as hard as most people would have imagined.

"Let's get out of here before our luck shifts," he said to Trevor, as he closed the study door in his wake.

"You've never had a cleverer idea in your life," Trevor educated him dryly as they busted down the hallway toward the stairwell.

Zahir's heart pounded anxiously with every step he took down the stairs to the entrance hall, and the tension coiled in his muscles did not unwind as the two of them made their way into the teeming banquet hall, which was packed with dancing couples.

After a few moments of searching, Zahir found Beniamino standing beside a refreshment table, sipping from a teacup. As he reached for a pastry, Zahir slipped the scroll into Beniamino's pocket, and, biting into the dessert, whispered, "Here's a present for you."

"Thank you." Beniamino kept his focus riveted on the whirling dancers, and, following his gaze, Zahir was relieved to see that Trevor had already faded into the partying crowd. "I wasn't sure you'd be able to offer me your gift. More than half of the Hibru guards we were relying upon didn't show up tonight, but at least Marietta has drawn Giovanni Medica away from the banquet hall."

"More than half the Hibru guards haven't shown up?" Zahir frowned. "That's awful. Something must have gone horribly awry. Do you think that Giovanni Medica suspects—"

"I think that you have done more than enough for the Hibru cause already." Beniamino patted his wrist. "If the Hibrus are to fall tonight, my young friend, there is no reason why you should go plummeting down with us. You've spent more than enough time fetching a refreshment now. Go speak with some loyal Tyrans before suspicion falls upon you."

Hating every component of his craven, traitorous body, Zahir approached a trio of Tyran merchants arguing vociferously about whether Yamani rice was a better investment than Carthaki grain and feigned an intense interest in their debate. The Tyran merchants were all puce with fervor and wine when a sudden silence in which nobody seemed to inhale or exhale fell over the hall as Givoanni Medica flanked by several squads of sentinels and a half-naked Marietta marched into the room.

"This evening, a group of vile, unfaithful Hibrus, showing an utter lack of appreciation for the many bounties my generosity has already bestowed upon them, sought to overthrow me," Giovanni Medica raged, his jowls aquiver. Over the exclamations of shock and horror from his Tyran guests, he continued to seethe, "Many of those who plotted against me have already been arrested and await a brutal public execution that will demonstrate quite plainly what happens to those who dare to betray me. Those of you who have committed treason against me may either surrender to my mercy or can further incite my ire by fighting those guards who will move to arrest you _now_."

On the final words, the banquet hall descended into pandemonium as Giovanni Medica's sentries, who had encircled the Hibru guards and Beniamino during the Vox Populi's speech, attacked the Hibrus. The Hibrus, apparently not about to trust in the mercy of a tyrant, drew their weapons.

As the hall filled with the sounds of shouting merchants and clashing swords, Zahir, aware that he could not openly combat Giovanni Medica's men, crept through the oddest battlefield he had ever encountered. Dodging waving swords, flying fists, and kicking legs, he reached Marrieta, who had not been assaulted by the Vox Populi's guards.

"Filthy traitor," he spat at her.

"Not to you; you aren't even a Hibru," she snapped.

"Neither are you," he snarled, his hand darting instinctively to his hilt.

"Good, because I despise the Hibrus and detest the Hibru blood that flows in my veins," screamed Marietta. "The fact that Giovanni will give me my own villa as a reward for betraying the Hibrus is just a nice bonus."

"How many Hibrus will die so you can have your own stupid villa?" growled Zahir.

A flaming fury consumed his brain, and it was this fire that drew his sword from his scabbard.

He was so fixated on chopping off Marietta's vain, greedy head so she would never enjoy the villa she had purchased with Hibru blood that he did not see one of Giovanni Medica's men surge forward to protect her. Nor did he spot the fact that the sentinel's blade would have passed through his chest from behind.

Yet, he heard a wild cry that prompted him to pivot in time for him to see Trevor collapse, clutching a crimson wound where he had taken the sentry's blow for Zahir. He did see Trevor's head turn toward him, his cheek against the cold floor. He did see the cloudy film in Trevor's eyes, the shock of being pierced by the sword. He did see Trevor gathering his courage, as though it were a physical struggle, to accept the hit.

He saw all this, and he felt the moment careen out of control into impossible time, which froze everything, even his heart. Shoving his sword back into its scabbard, he dropped to his knees beside Trevor, hunching over the other teenager as if he could protect Trevor from a disaster that had already struck. The knowledge that Trevor was terribly injured choked him as he clutched Trevor's hand and received only a feeble twitch of frigid fingers as an answering squeeze.

For an instant, hope surged in Zahir's veins as the haze around Trevor's eyes faded, and the other boy whispered, "Peace be with you."

The next second, his hope was transformed into soul-crushing despair when Trevor's muscles stiffened, the last flutter of breath left Trevor's lungs and was not replaced, and the little heat remaining in Trevor's skin disappeared entirely. Trying not to look at the blank, lifeless green eyes that had once been so vivacious and so sparkling with wit, Zahir heard Trevor's last words rise like a battle cry inside his head: _"Peace be with you." _

Oh, but there was no peace to be had in a world without Trevor, and there could be no justice when Trevor had been allowed to perish in his place. There could only be wrath and vengeance, but if it was revenge he sought, he would have to kill himself and the guard for murdering Trevor, and, somehow, Zahir knew that Trevor wouldn't have wanted any killing to be done in his name. Trevor would wish for life, not death, as a monument to his life and his death. Trevor would say that there had been enough death and destruction tonight without Zahir running around on a murderous rampage.

Of course, Trevor was no longer alive to say anything, and that simple fact caused Zahir to sob as he had never cried before. His wails rose and fell in an endless cycle of grief for himself, for Trevor, and for a world that was cold enough to kill a Trevor while allowing a Marietta or a Giovanni Medica to live.

As the tears streamed down his face, he could only think numbly that perhaps all the rules in the cruel, wintry world were vindicated if every act of defiance was punished with the destruction this night had been jammed with. If you broke the rules, he concluded on the verge of hysteria, then it was only fair that they ruined you in return.


	39. Chapter 39

Rest in Peace

"Zahir." The sound of his own name combined with a firm squeeze on his shoulder forced Zahir to tear his gaze away from Trevor's body, which he simultaneously felt a compulsion to look at and couldn't bear to lay eyes upon. When he glanced up and realized that the person addressing him had been his knightmaster, he couldn't prevent himself from feeling a surge of utterly irrational disappointment that it wasn't Trevor, who was no more, reaching out to him. Trevor had been kind, cheerful, funny, and understanding. Empathy had coursed through Trevor's veins. Around Trevor, Zahir had never needed to pretend to be something he wasn't, because Trevor accepted him for who he was. Trevor had seen the best and worst in Zahir and still had never abandoned him. Only a sword to the chest taken because Zahir had been oblivious to the menace behind him could get Trevor to leave Zahir. Now, for the rest of his life, he would think of Trevor or spin around to say something to Trevor, and each time he did so, he would feel an icy dagger slice him as he remembered that Trevor was gone from him. "Let's get you back to the villa."

"I don't want to go back to the villa." Zahir shook his head. Right now, all he wanted to do was curl up and die. Then, he would be with Trevor again. Besides, he certainly didn't deserve to live when Trevor had been slain for his sake. "I want to stay with Trevor."

Trevor might be dead, but Zahir wasn't going to leave him alone.

As if he could read Zahir's mind, King Jonathan remarked quietly, "Squire, the essence that made Trevor who he was is no longer trapped in his body. It is free. Refusing to cling to his body does not mean that you are forsaking his soul."

"What—what will happen to his body?" Zahir asked hoarsely. At the moment, he didn't care if he was guilty of a sort of idolatry in being so concerned with the corpse of a dead friend, because, as far as he could discern, a soul could not find rest in any afterlife if the body it had inhabited wasn't properly cared for. Like the living, the soul of the departed must crave closure.

"He will be cleaned and prayed over," his knightmaster answered, tightening his grip on Zahir's shoulder. "When we return to Tortall, his body will be returned to his family, who will arrange for his funeral and burial."

Trying not to imagine Trevor's body imprisoned in a coffin beneath cold, dark soil and not to envision worms devouring his friend's once warm flesh piece by piece, Zahir shoved himself to his feet, and allowed himself to be escorted from the banquet hall, which was eerily silent now that the Vox Populi's soldiers had dragged Beniamino and the other Hibrus to dungeons.

All he could think about as he walked through the entrance hall and down the stairs to a waiting carriage was Trevor. Trevor had been so vibrantly alive that it was impossible that he was dead. Yet, Zahir had felt the heat fade from his skin and had witnessed the wit ebbing from his piercing ivy eyes.

The fact that someone whom he had laughed with only an hour before could be dead made the blood boil in his veins as he longed to smash through the impenetrable stone wall that divided the living from the dead.

Dead. The idea swerved wildly about his mind, and he struggled to apply it to someone as young and vivacious as Trevor. Dead meant a lot of never mores. Never more would he tease Trevor. Never more would he see Trevor's eyes gleam as the other boy bantered with him. Never more would he hear Trevor's chuckle or feel his spirit lighten when Trevor offered a disarming grin. Never more would he trade stories or secrets with Trevor. Never more would the pair of them go on adventures together in strange lands. Never more would they hurl snowballs at each other. Never more would crack jokes about the disgusting food they had to eat or the cramped quarters they had to share. Never more would they perform acts of charity together.

Never more. Never more. Those horrible words formed a dreadful dirge in his head. He wanted to scream out all the grief and fury swirling around inside him. However, he couldn't do so because, when Trevor had died, some crucial portion of his tongue had been ripped out. Now he was like a composer gone deaf or a blinded painter. He could sense the power, but he could no longer touch it. It was forever beyond his reach. As a result, all the wrath he should have directed against a world that had stolen Trevor from him was instead turned inward upon himself.

After all, he told himself bitterly as he clambered into the coach behind King Jonathan and settled himself on a cushion that was much more comfortable than vermin like him deserved, it was his fault that Trevor was now as gone as last week's pot roast. It was his fault that Trevor was killed. If Zahir hadn't been so focused on making Marietta pay for her crime, Trevor would still be alive. If Zahir had been alert to his surroundings, Trevor would not have needed to sacrifice himself. If he had been half the warrior he had been trained to be, his neck wouldn't have required saving by a diplomat's apprentice.

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," Zahir burst out, feeling as though the words were choking him, because, even if apologies never truly made anything right, sometimes they were all the redemption that was left to anybody who had bumbled things as thoroughly as Zahir had. "I—I should never have disobeyed you. If I had done as I was told, Trevor would be alive now. Mithros knows that I really was trying to do the right thing, but everything went to the worst part of the afterlife anyway. The Hibru rebellion failed, Trevor is dead, and nothing will ever be as it should be. The whole world has gone cock-eyed, and I'm to blame for it."

Sinking back into the cushion, he felt as though a noose were tied around his neck, strangling him. To have helped the Hibrus made sense, but it was an intellectual sense, and intellect was a deceiver. Involving himself in the revolution had felt right, but emotions could not be trusted, since they could be so easily manipulated. Worse still, every instinct inside him screamed out that what had happened tonight wasn't an insolated tragedy. It could and would occur again, because Zahir was helpless to stop it.

"You're not responsible for the revolt's failure," the king replied gently, patting Zahir's knee as the carriage lurched away from Giovanni Medica's villa, which Zahir would always associate with carnage. "As for Trevor's death, stars rise and fall, Squire, but you do not cause their movements. It's not fair to yourself to hold yourself accountable for crimes that you did not commit."

"There are consequences for my actions." Refusing to be consoled by this comment, Zahir shook his head, as tears pricked like quills at his eyes. "I'm responsible for the consequences of my actions, sire."

"Zahir, you are only to blame if you know the consequences for your behavior before you act," murmured King Jonathan.

"I don't understand why you aren't scolding me when I offered you the perfect opening." Zahir was too lost in self-loathing to feel any more disgust with himself when the tears welling in his eyes began trickling down his face. "In the past, you didn't mind punishing me for missing curfew, Your Majesty, and this is a thousand times worse than that, but you are being all understanding."

For a moment, the king paused as the coach traveled down the cobbled street to the villa in which the Tortallan delegation was residing. Then he sighed. "Being a knightmaster means juggling with varying degrees of success sternness and sympathy as well as mercy and discipline. Ultimately, all I'm trying to do is teach you as best as I can. In this case, I feel like losing your closest friend is a far harsher penalty than you deserve for disobeying me. Besides, there is no need for me to punish you when you are doing enough of that for yourself. If you already see what you have done wrong, punishing you is cruel."

"Not punishing me is even crueler, sire," muttered Zahir, thinking that this would be the only time in his life that he would ever beg for discipline. "I need to do something to redeem myself after Trevor's death."

"You don't have to atone for Trevor's death," King Jonathan educated him crisply, as the carriage halted and they climbed out of it.

"I do because I killed him, Your Majesty," responded Zahir, as they entered the villa.

"A Tyran solider slew him," countered his knightmaster, steering him up a staircase and down a corridor.

"He was killed taking a blow to the chest for me that I didn't see until it was too late," Zahir argued, shaking his head bleakly. "When it comes down to it, sire, I was the death of Trevor as much as the Tyran guard was. I didn't intend to kill Trevor, but I did anyway, and for that I am guilty."

"Trevor _chose _to die for you," the king reminded him softly, as they arrived in a chamber Zahir was astonished to discover was his own bedroom, because his mourning made it impossible for him to keep track of where in the villa he was being led. As King Jonathan seated himself on Zahir's bed, he went on, "Don't diminish his sacrifice by forgetting to remember that it was his decision to die for you."

"I wasn't worthy of his sacrifice, Your Majesty," Zahir snapped, crumbling onto his bed. "He should be alive now—not me."

"Tell me something, Zahir." His knightmaster's sapphire eyes riveted on him, and he had to fight the urge to hide from that almost omniscient gaze. "Would you have died for Trevor?"

"In a heartbeat, sire," whispered Zahir fervently, noting that one heartbeat really was all the time it took to die.

"Then you are deserving of Trevor's sacrifice." King Jonathan wrapped an arm around Zahir's shoulders. "I didn't know your friend nearly as well as you did, but I can assure you that he was not the sort of person who would want you torturing yourself over the last gift he could give you. Even in death, he would wish to be a source of comfort, not grief, in your life."

"His last words to me were 'Peace be with you.'" Zahir spoke as if his throat had been clogged by the salty rivers flowing down his cheeks.

"That was his way of telling you that he was at peace with himself as he lay dying and of expressing his wish for you to be at peace with yourself, as well," the king informed him in a hushed tone, brushing the tears away from Zahir's face. "That was his manner of saying that you shouldn't blame yourself for his death, because he didn't hold you responsible."

"It's not just, Your Majesty," shouted Zahir, pounding his knuckles together, and hoping to create enough physical pain to drown a fraction of the emotional agony surging through his veins. "Why did someone so devoted to peace and love have to suffer a violent, hateful death for my sake? How come somebody as good as Trevor had to be killed before his twentieth birthday while Marietta and Giovanni Medica are permitted to go on living like parasites?"

"Everyone dies, Squire," his knightmaster stated gingerly. "When you become the Voice, you will see that even the longest lives of mortals last for but a single breath in comparison to ages upon ages that our world survives through. If we are all doomed to die and perish relatively young, we are left not with the question of whether or when we will die, but how we will live and how we will die. Trevor dedicated his life to serving others, tried to bring serenity and joy wherever he went, and was guided by his principles. By that standard, many have lived much less fulfilling lives. Trevor died saving a close friend, and many people do not die so nobly. Furthermore, Trevor died at peace with himself and the world. Unlike a considerable amount of beings, he did not perish with a soul full of hatred and regrets. That is the best way to pass away, and to do so is a true blessing."

"To die young is not a blessing!" snarled Zahir, bristling. "You can only talk like it is, sire, because you never had to do it. Unlike Trevor, you got to get married and have children."

"Yes, and, unlike me, Trevor will never have to grow old." King Jonathan's eyes seared into Zahir. "He will never be thrust into difficult situations where he would have been compelled to sacrifice or modify his youthful principles. His innocence will never be squashed by seeing people suffer and die. He will never have to live with a deteriorating body, since he perished in the flower of his adolescence. There is a terrible cost to growing old, just as there is a dreadful price to dying young."

"Trevor would have done much good in the world as a diplomat." Stubbornly, Zahir lifted his chin. "Whatever you'd like to believe on the contrary, Your Majesty, he was snatched from us too soon."

"As hard as it might be for you to accept, Zahir, nobody is ever called back to the gods before it is their time," the king answered delicately. "When you are the Voice, you will comprehend that."

"I don't understand why the gods would wish to kill someone so good when he was so very young," scoffed Zahir. "The only reason they would do that is if they enjoy seeing humans suffer, sire."

"The gods," King Jonathan insisted in a dignified voice, "must have felt that he had already served his purpose in the world."

"What function would that be, Your Majesty?" Zahir snorted, taking refuge in anger rather than sinking into unbearable grief. "Is he supposed to be some grand example to the rest of us mortals? Are we all intended to watch what happened to him and say that we, too, would like to spend our lives working for peace so that we can die from a sword wound to the chest? Are we supposed to find his fate encouraging rather than disheartening?"

"You can make of Trevor's life and death whatever you wish, Squire." King Jonathan squeezed Zahir's shoulder. "I will only say that certain special beings come into our lives and help us reach our full potential, and I feel that it would be a true tragedy if all you got out of Trevor's life and death was some cynical lesson about not being a virtuous person because the death toll is too high."

"That's not what I learned from Trevor." Ashamed, Zahir bowed his head, because now that Trevor was dead, it seemed like an unpardonable offense to deny all that he had done in his much too short lifetime. "I learned so much about forgiveness and tolerance for yourself and others from him, sire. It's just that I wanted to have time to learn more from him."

"You have learned all of Trevor's most important lessons, and now you only face the challenge of applying them in your life," his knightmaster assured him quietly. "As you grieve, you might be wary of how much of mourning is selfishness—focusing on what you have lost. Part of dealing with a death is rejoicing for those who have gone onto the Divine Realms, since excessive grief is indicative of possession, not love, and possession results in rage, not healing."

"How do you know that Trevor has gone onto the Divine Realms, Your Majesty?" demanded Zahir, his jaw clenching. "What if he is being tormented in the afterlife because he prayed before statues?"

"Squire, if virtue and good deeds can secure merriment in the next life, I have no doubt that Trevor is happy," declared the king softly.

"Can virtue and good deeds guarantee happiness in the afterlife, sire?" Zahir pressed.

"It is not for mortals to know exactly what will secure eternal bliss," King Jonathan responded after a moment's silence. "Still, I would say that when a soul leaves this world, it departs with only the goods deeds it has done for others and the virtue it carries. Therefore, I would hazard a guess that virtue and good deeds are, in the end, the most prudent long-term investments a being can make. After all, even if there is no afterlife, virtue and good deeds at least promise one a fulfilling existence."

"Humph." Biting his lip, Zahir folded his arms across his chest. "If there is no afterlife, though, Trevor dies young and he doesn't get eternal bliss. That's not very fair, Your Majesty, considering that Giovanni Medica is still alive and oppressing people."

"Even if there is no afterlife, Zahir ibn Alhaz, Trevor still can enjoy eternal life." His knightmaster's tone was firm. "During his lifetime, Trevor exerted a tremendous influence over you, and, now that he is gone, what he taught you will continue to shape you. Consequently, your actions will permit Trevor to go on living through you, and the people you impact by mimicking Trevor will affect others in a similar fashion and so on until the ripples of Trevor's behavior will be felt until the end of time. In that way, even if there is no afterlife, there is still eternal life for those who are virtuous and perform good deeds."

When he couldn't devise any argument to this, Zahir could only vow to himself that he would find some way to honor Trevor in all he did, even as he mumbled, "You seem to know what you are talking about in this matter, sire."

"You are not the first person who has dealt with a friend dying young." King Jonathan patted Zahir's knee. "Unfortunately, Squire, your pain is an ancient one, and I have experienced it. When I was a page, the Sweating Sickness struck the palace, and one of my childhood friends, Francis, was killed. At the time, I felt like I could have died of sorrow, but, in the end, I found the strength and the courage to move on, as will you."

Gently, the king brushed a stray lock of hair away from Zahir's forehead. "Francis and Trevor were the sort of beings who would want us to be at peace with ourselves and with their deaths. I firmly believe that they are watching over us now, and that, one day, if the gods are merciful in their judgment of us, we will all be reunited in the afterlife. For now, you and I must be content with the knowledge that the dead live on inside us if we remain true to their memory. We can only honor the dead by living, Zahir."

"I'll bet that you didn't kill Francis like I did Trevor." Grimly, Zahir shook his head."You can't have felt half as guilty as I do now, Your Majesty."

"I didn't kill Francis, but I have mistakenly been the death of far more people than you have, Zahir." His knightmaster sounded oddly subdued. "On the day of my coronation, my deranged cousin, as part of his plot to destroy Tortall, created a huge earthquake. I had to draw on the Dominion Jewel in order to stop it, and the power that magic sapped from the ground caused a terrible famine, which killed hundreds of people. I certainly didn't intend to kill any of those poor individuals, but they still died as a consequence of my choice to employ the Dominion Jewel, and their deaths continue to haunt me. I miscalculated, and they are dead, and that will never seem entirely just to me. I did what I had to do to save Tortall, but that doesn't make them any less dead."

"That means that you know what it's like to think that you are doing the right thing only to later feel that you couldn't have been more wrong if you had tried,sire?" Zahir, tilting his head inquiringly, was amazed to discover a faint stirring of hope for redemption form in his heart. "That means that you understand how awful it is to believe that you are saving people only to learn that you are being the death of them instead?"

"Yes, I'm afraid that I do." Gravely, King Jonathan nodded. "That's why I have decided that evilness requires some level of a malevolent intent. As long as there is no malicious intent, there is no need to hate yourself for your actions. All you have to do is learn from your mistake and do your honest best to avoid becoming a repeat offender in much the way that I am striving to prevent another catastrophe like the famine by storing power in gems that I can draw on when I need to use the Dominion Jewel."

"That can't be enough to atone for being the death of a friend, Your Majesty," disagreed Zahir, his lips thinning into a resolute line.

"The world is difficult, but people like Trevor and Francis have overcome it." King Jonathan kissed Zahir lightly on the forehead. "Be at peace, Squire."

Feeling tears well in his eyes again, Zahir wanted to know, "Does all this mean that you still trust me, sire?"

Then, before the king could reply, he went on in a hoarse rush, "You must understand that I never really wished to betray you, and I only did it because I felt like I had to and because it truly seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances. I didn't do it to hurt you or anything petty like that, and I can't imagine how dreadful it would be if you could never trust me again after what happened. It would be like losing you and Trevor at the same time. I don't know if I could bear that."

"Hush, Zahir," his knightmaster commanded, giving him a slight shake. "Despite what you did tonight, you are still one of the most honorable beings that I know, and your words at the present prove that you remain trustworthy. To answer your question, then, yes, you still have my trust."

"How can you be sure that I will not betray you again?" Zahir frowned, his forehead knotting.

"I trust that you are too honorable to commit such a crime, especially after I have expressed such faith in your integrity, Squire," responded King Jonathan dryly.

Realizing that the king was correct in this perception, Zahir scowled. "Honor gets a person every time, doesn't it?"

"Well, I regard your honor as your salvation rather than your damnation." Giving Zahir's knee a final pat, King Jonathan rose. "Now, I suggest you get some rest. I want you to attend a meeting tomorrow morning that I have with the Vox Populi in which you might be surprised by the way I will find to help the Hibrus, after all."

Then, before Zahir could besiege his knightmaster with a thousand questions about this enigmatic remark, the king left the bedroom while Zahir struggled to come to terms with the guilt, the grief, and the insane hope waging war in his heart.


	40. Chapter 40

An Eye for an Eye

"I beg your pardon for last evening's unpleasantness," said Giovanni Medica the next morning as he, one of his scribes who was busily recording every word anyone uttered, King Jonathan, Lord Conan, and Zahir sat in cushioned wooden chairs around an expansive conference table. The Vox Populi, who apparently was convinced that his guests should only cease eating long enough to sleep, had ordered a maid to set out olives, cheese, and wine on the center of the table. The part of Zahir that felt like a fish out of water and every bit as dead inside as he glanced around at the blandly smiling faces of his fellow Tortallans wondered if Giovanni Medica had offered them wine only to dull their nerves and wits. "I hope you didn't feel too intimidated by the melee. I assure you that if the rebel scum had not, in their obdurate pride, resisted arrest, much of last night's nastiness could have been averted."

"Indeed," King Jonathan replied, and Zahir struggled not to roll his eyes in disgust. In his knightmaster's most level and most inscrutable tone, the word could have meant agreement or argument. The bland smile that accompanied the comment urged everybody present to interpret the remark however they wished. The king had uttered a word that signified everything at once, and, therefore, truly meant nothing. This was exactly why Zahir hated politics.

"I suppose that I should not have relied upon vicious traitors to have the decency to submit to their arrest when innocent bystanders would be injured by their rebellion," the Vox Populi continued, waving his arms indignantly.

Then, his expression softening into one of deep sorrow, he focused his gaze upon Lord Conan. "Words cannot convey how sorry I am about the tragic loss of your young apprentice. I have taken the liberty of sending a letter with my condolences and a crate of the finest fruit to his grieving family."

Zahir was so nettled by the prospect of some hollow words written neatly on a page and a crate of fine fruit compensating on any level for Trevor's life that he spat out before he could even think to silence himself in the name of tact, "The Hibrus didn't slay Trevor, you know, sir. It was your own loyal soldier who did that."

"Zahir," hissed King Jonathan, laying a restraining hand on his shoulder. However, it was only the understanding of how much Trevor would detest it if his death became another reason for people to shout at each other that prevented Zahir from screaming out in very graphic terms what exactly he thought of the Tyran leader.

"I sympathize with your anger and your pain." Gravely, Giovanni Medica bowed his head in Zahir's direction, and Zahir could only grit his teeth, longing to snap that the Vox Populi was too ruthless to comprehend what it was like to desire to take the place of a dead friend or to fume ineffectually against an insane world that had cruelly silenced one of the few voices of peace which could have stopped it from ripping itself apart. "Still, all of you must see that guard did not violate diplomatic immunity upon my orders. The solder who killed Trevor of Marsh was acting upon his own initiative. Since then, he has been court-martialed and executed."

Here, the Vox Populi paused and then concluded, "In Tyra, we believe in taking an eye for an eye. We leave it to the gods to turn the other cheek."

Taken aback, Zahir stared at the Tyran leader. Although he had longed to slay the soldier who had been the death of Trevor, he also didn't think that the man should have been killed without the opportunity to truly defend himself. After all, as much as Zahir loathed to admit it, he understood that the guard had only been attempting to do his duty by protecting Marietta the backstabber. Truth be told, Zahir couldn't help but feel that the soldier had been made a scapegoat…

Numbly, he observed that Trevor would have said that an eye for an eye left everyone blind. Trevor would never have wished for blood to be spilled in his name. Yet, Zahir could never explain this to Giovanni Medica any more than the splendor of an opera could be described to a deaf man, because compassion, mercy, and love were ultimately concepts that the Vox Populi could not fathom. Zahir could only hope that Trevor's spirit, if it still existed, hadn't seen the soldier killed for his sake, because he would despise being the cause of death.

Ignoring Zahir's astonishment, Giovanni Medica riveted his attention on King Jonathan, stating smoothly, "I wish to inform you that, during last night's minor uprising, my men uncovered the cargo that your merchants should have received weeks ago. We will, of course, be sending the goods to your merchants, and we are deeply sorry for the inconvenience the delayed shipments caused you and your subjects."

"Since Tyra's economy rests on trade, I hope that you understand that people do not want to do business with anyone who proves unreliable," remarked King Jonathan, arching an eyebrow, as Zahir wondered where exactly his knightmaster was headed with all this. "Tortall's merchants and monarchs are not exceptions to that rule."

"Of course not." The Vox Populi's tone was appeasing. "Tyra will be happy to offer the Tortallan merchants a fifteen percent refund to compensate for the tardy arrival of their goods."

"An unacceptable proposal, I'm afraid," announced the king coolly.

"You desire me to increase the refund rate?" Giovanni Medica's eyes narrowed slightly.

"No," answered King Jonathan, his gaze piercing into the Vox Populi. "I want assurance that shipments will not be so ludicrously delayed as a consequence of political unrest in your country in the future."

"You have my promise and the pledge of my council that—" Giovanni Medica began, but Zahir's knightmaster cut him off.

"With all due respect, that's not enough to satisfy me." The king shook his head. "I want actions, not mere words."

"What kind of actions?" Giovanni Medica's forehead furrowed.

"From what you have told me and from trustworthy sources of my own, I am aware that it was a group of rebellious Hibrus who stole the cargo," responded King Jonathan, and Zahir felt a faint surge of vindication at being one of those trustworthy sources. "I simply wish actions to be taken so that this sort of misunderstanding doesn't happen again."

"In that case, you have nothing to worry about." Giovanni Medica beamed. "Tomorrow the rebels will be publically hanged until they are unconscious. Then, they will be cut down, revived, and disemboweled."

As Zahir flinched, the Vox Populi's grin broadened. "I assure you that, after that, the spirit of revolt among the Hibrus will be cooled. Few men and women have the stomach for martyrdom."

"Or the spirit of rebellion will be fired to new heights by such a display," King Jonathan countered. "Execute the traitors to show that revolt will not be tolerated, but also demonstrate your capacity for mercy. Rulers should be both loved and feared. The best way to ensure that rebellions don't occur is to provide the people with little cause for revolt."

"What would you have me do then?" Givoanni Medica arched an eyebrow, and Zahir found himself waiting with bated breath for the king's answer.

"I want you to begin paying the Hibrus for their work, just as the other Tyrans are paid for their labor," explained King Jonathan firmly. "I want you to allow Hibrus to live in the city if they wish. I want you to grant Hibru children entrance into your schools. I want you to offer qualified Hibrus better jobs than the menial labor they are given now. In short, I want you to treat the Hibrus in the same fashion you would treat the other Tyrans."

"Who will clean the streets and dye the cloths then?" Givoanni Medica demanded, and Zahir knew that his knightmaster wouldn't be able to help the Hibrus, after all. The Vox Populi would be too concerned with maintaining unpolluted thoroughfares in the good part of the city to worry about justice in Tyra.

"Whoever is qualified," declared the king. "Since Hibru children are taught from an early age how to read and write in their holy language, you might be astounded, though, by how many of them will be qualified to serve as scribes or diplomats in the future. I think you should nourish the Hibru talent among you, rather than seek to stamp it out. Besides, if you show mercy to the Hibrus now, they will be grateful to you and serve you well."

"Hmm." Giovanni Medica sipped thoughtfully at his wine. "However, many Tyrans will hate me for permitting the Hibrus to rise."

"The only Tyrans who will are those of few talents who understand that if ethnicity is removed from the equation, they are less qualified for certain jobs than many Hibrus," the king pointed out dryly, while Zahir, revolted at hearing human rights treated like a commodity, longed to vanish. Even though a part of him recognized that economics was the only language that Givoanni Medica comprehended, he still didn't wish to see anyone stooping to the Vox Populi's level. It made the Tyran leader's outlook seem acceptable rather than insane. "As I expect you know from trade, competition drives progress, so, if you wish for your citizens to do their best jobs, make them vie with one another for their positions. People develop their best skills when they know that pedigree alone will not guarantee them success in the world."

"You make cogent points." Giovanni Medica's eyes gleamed craftily. "Yet, implementing such reforms would be a costly investment, and I'm not certain the potential gain is worth the risk."

"Understood." King Jonathan pressed his lips together, and Zahir pondered whether the king was as disgusted with himself as Zahir was with him. "Instead of giving my merchants the refund for the delayed arrival of their goods, you may use the money to implement the changes I detailed. Be aware, though, that I expect that the reforms will be carried out, because I do not want to have to intervene in your county's politics again because the trade of my realm is disrupted."

"Of course." The Vox Populi nodded his head several times, as Zahir's brain reeled with amazement at how quickly a country's policies could be changed. "Have no fear. Consider your reforms on the road to implementation as we speak."

"Wonderful." King Jonathan rose. "Then we have reached an agreement."

After much bowing and well-wishing, the meeting drew to a close. Still unable to truly wrap his mind around the fact that the king had somehow managed to find a diplomatic solution to at least some of the oppression the Hibrus faced (personally, he wasn't naïve enough to imagine that things would improve rapidly if Giovanni Medica was in charge of the reformation efforts), Zahir followed his knightmaster and Lord Conan out of the Vox Populi's sprawling villa and into a waiting carriage.

"I don't know how you managed to change Giovanni Medica's mind, and I was there when it happened, sire," Zahir muttered as soon as he could speak, while the coach lurched down the villa's drive and onto the cobbled boulevard.

"Well, I think, Squire, that the Vox Populi was more scared by the rebellion than he would like to admit," commented King Jonathan, his lips quirking.

"I was right, then, Your Majesty, that the Hibrus would only get respect if they revolted," Zahir stated, lifting his nose proudly in the air, since he had a crystal clear recollection of telling his knightmaster as much.

"I'm not quite certain I agree that rebellion was the only answer," replied the king. "Still, the fact does remain that, after the revolt, Giovanni Medica is willing to make concessions regarding his treatment of them to reduce the odds of them rebelling against him again. Losing a little power is preferable to losing all authority."

"The Vox Populi didn't lose any power, though, sire, since he still will decide which people are qualified to do what jobs, and I bet that Hibrus will be disproportionately qualified for the worst positions," Zahir snorted, glancing out the foggy window at the rain hitting the cobblestones.

"Prejudice is an ugly thing that runs deeply through many people's veins, and it can never be easily overcome, Zahir." His knightmaster sighed. "I do not doubt that the Hibrus will still find themselves all too often delegated to the lowest level jobs. However, at the very least, a certain amount of Hibru children will be attending schools with other Tyrans, and that will provide future generations with the chance of advancement. We have also alerted the Vox Populi to the economic benefits of allowing the Hibrus to compete with other Tyrans for higher positions. Ultimately, we have given the Hibrus an opportunity—not an equal one, but one nevertheless. Now we can only hope that the Hibrus will be able to make the most of the opportunity."

"If you say so, Your Majesty." Zahir shot a speculative look at the king. "You said that if Giovanni Medica showed mercy toward the Hibrus, they would be grateful and serve you well. Is that how you see the Bazhir?"

Before King Jonathan could even respond, Zahir could feel his spine stiffening. The Bazhir were slaves to nobody except the gods, and if the king thought otherwise, he couldn't be more wrong.

"When I speak to someone like the Vox Populi, I have to present arguments that he will find convincing if I wish to persuade him to do what I want," King Jonathan answered delicately. "That doesn't mean that I agree with those arguments."

"You still have to invent them, though, sire." Zahir's jaw clenched. "That means that you have to think them."

"Squire, listen to me." The king placed a hand on Zahir's shoulder, but he twisted away, thinking that he would not tolerate being patronized. "I'm a leader. I lead the way teachers teach, drunkards drink, and killers kill. When I first traveled to the desert, I was interested in understanding the Bazhir because I knew that I couldn't hope to lead a people that I didn't understand. Then, when Ali Mukhtab offered me the chance to serve as the next Voice, I seized the opportunity, since I recognized that was the only manner in which I would ever get the Bazhir to accept me as their ruler and that it was the only way to bring any lasting peace to the desert. Since then, I have come to truly appreciate the Bazhir culture, and I admit that there are times when I enjoy being a Voice more than I do being a king because I am freer to be myself when I am the Voice than when I am king."

"I see, Your Majesty," Zahir ground out, noting inwardly that he perceived plainly just what a paternalistic oppressor his knightmaster could be.

At that moment, the carriage came to a halt, and they climbed out. As they hurried through the gray sheets of rain to their villa, King Jonathan said to Lord Conan, "I'm sorry, my lord, if you felt excluded from the conversation in the coach. That wasn't my intention at all."

"Think nothing of it, my liege." Lord Conan bowed as soon as they walked into the blessedly dry entrance hall. "I was just happy to have time to reflect on the last essay Trevor wrote for me. It was very funny without being offensive, and intelligent without being stuffy. It was so very characteristic of him, and it's so difficult to accept that his writings are all I have left of him now…"

Shocked to find a diplomat trailing off awkwardly, Zahir glanced at Lord Conan's flushed face and realized with a jolt that the man was grieving Trevor, too.

Clearing his throat, Lord Conan went on, "Anyway, sire, if you don't mind, I will see that all of Trevor's belongings have been packed up for his family."

"Of course." The king nodded, and Lord Conan bustled off.

Once he was confident that the diplomat was out of earshot, Zahir muttered, "I didn't even think to imagine that he would be mourning Trevor, as well."

"To lose a student can be as agonizing as losing a child, Zahir ibn Alhaz." Gently, King Jonathan rested a palm on Zahir's shoulder, and, this time, he didn't jerk out of his knightmaster's grasp, because the man might be a paternalistic oppressor, but he would keep Zahir and never let him go, and, at the present, that was the sort of comfort he needed. "When I saw you sobbing over Trevor's body, I confess that, as horrible as it sounds, I was grateful that it was Trevor, not you, who was dead."

"At the same time, Your Majesty, I was wishing that I was dead." His throat tightening, Zahir swallowed before rasping out, "I should have been the one who was killed if there was any justice in the world."

"Guilt will eat you alive it you let it, Squire," the king advised him softly, squeezing his shoulder. "I suggest that you don't permit it to do so."

Hating himself for not knowing how to counter this, Zahir asked, deciding that now was the moment to switch to another depressing topic to prevent the mood from ever lightening again, "When the Vox Populi said that he was going to disembowel the rebels, do you think he was referring to Beniamino as one of those who would be executed in that gruesome fashion?"

"I'm afraid so," King Jonathan replied grimly.

"Oh." Zahir felt as though his tattered heart was being ripped into a thousand more slivers as tears welled in his eyes. It was terrible to envision Beniamino dying and suffering far more in the process than Trevor had. How much death could a person witness without going mad, anyway? How much heartache could be endured before a heart stopped beating? How much pain would he experience before he finally ceased feeling anything in order to spare himself the anguish? "I—I had hoped, sire, that Givoanni Medica might grant Beniamino some clemency."

"Then you don't understand the Vox Populi as well as you believe you do." His knightmaster sighed. "Zahir, the laws of patronage are very similar to the rules of fealty. Patrons anticipate loyal service from those they sponsor, and to betray one's patron is quite literally to bite the hand that feeds you. In this instance, Giovanni Medica would expect extra devotion from Beniamino, since he would have viewed himself as lifting the poet out of the poverty and prejudice he would otherwise have encountered as someone who supposedly had converted from being a Hibru. To be honest, the Vox Populi might very well have perceived Beniamino as somebody close to him, and rulers seldom show mercy when those close to them prove to be traitors. If anything, the pain of someone close to them betraying them will make them more callous."

Feeling himself blanching as he contemplated the brutal fate that awaited Beniamino and remembering how he, too, had betrayed his ruler after some would argue that he had been raised to a height unfathomable for a Bazhir, Zahir whispered, "I want to see Beniamino before he dies, Your Majesty."

Zahir expected King Jonathan to inform him that this was impossible, but, instead, the king said quietly, "Then you must dress in the plain robes that you have seen Mithran priests wear, and go to the city prison. Say you are studying to be a priest, which isn't a lie, and that your teacher sent you to tend to Beniamino's spiritual needs. Don't reveal your identity to the guards, don't involve yourself in anything that could compromise the deal I just made with the Vox Populi, and be grateful that your complexion is such that you can pass yourself off as a Tyran."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." For some reason, Zahir nearly choked on the words as he rushed off to change into robes that would allow him to pass himself off as a Mithran novitiate.


	41. Chapter 41

Last Gift

When Zahir entered the prison, he had to cough involuntarily in a futile attempt to clear the stench of unwashed human and feces from his nostrils. Before his nose could recover from this assault, he found his path, as soon as he stepped through the door, barred by two pikes.

"What do you want?" a voice growled, and, squinting through the dimness, saw that the pikes were held by a pair of burly guards, who appeared as humorless as sentries typically did.

Bowing his head in the fashion he had witnessed many Mithran priests employ, Zahir answered as steadily as he could, telling himself that he wasn't lying, and, even if he was, it was worth it to see Beniamino, "I am training to be a priest. My master sent me to tend to the spiritual needs of Beniamino."

"Good luck with that," snorted the second sentinel. "The last priest that came by to visit him couldn't convince him of the necessity of repenting and being absolved before he dies. The gods themselves probably couldn't persuade him to soften his hard heart."

"Nevertheless, I must speak with him." Zahir's jaw clenched, and he was starting to think that he wouldn't mind stabbing the guards if that permitted him to see Beniamino. As far as he was concerned, it was Giovanni Medica, not Beniamino, who had the hard heart, and it was the Vox Populi, not Beniamino, who required forgiveness. By even working for Giovanni Medica, these sentries were condoning his evil, and so were in more need of absolution than Beniamino, who had fought against the Vox Populi's corruption.

"All of you priests are either holy fools or greedy, amoral scumbags." The first guard rolled his eyes. "There's never any middle ground with you lot."

"We'll let you see the prisoner," continued the second sentinel, eyeing Zahir's plain robes. "You don't have any weapons tucked under those robes, do you?"

"The gods will be my shield if they wish, and if they don't, then no weapon will save me from their wrath," Zahir replied, thinking that, while the guards would probably interpret his remark as a declaration that he wasn't armed, he was no holy fool. He had a dagger hidden beneath the folds of his robes, and he wasn't about to surrender it.

"Then follow me," ordered the first sentry, marching Zahir down a cold, dank stone hallway between cells where prisoners, dressed in filthy rags, moaned, begged for release, or stared blankly at the iron bars confining them in their dungeons.

After a walk that could have constituted a form of torture in itself and that seemed to take all the time it would require to cross Tyra on foot, the cells gradually became less occupied.

"We keep our most dangerous prisoners in isolation where they can't incite anyone else locked up here into rebellion," explained the guard.

Zahir was spared the effort of devising a tactful response to this when they arrived outside Beniamino's dungeon.

"Shout if the prisoner gets violent," the sentinel told Zahir, turning away to return to his post. "Sound echoes in here, so I might be able to reach here in time to save you."

Zahir was glad that the sentry had departed, because, as he took in the sight of Beniamino's fatigued, haunted face, frailer frame, and now dirty robes, he felt tears well up in his eyes. Beniamino didn't deserve to be trapped and degraded like this. He, and all his people, should be free. Nothing ever worked out as it should in Tyra, or anywhere else for that matter, though. Fighting for justice was just the surest way to get yourself mistreated and thrown in prison.

"Zahir." Beniamino's lips cracked into a faint smile. "When I saw you approaching in those robes, I thought that the priest from the cathedral I used to attend services at was back to try to convince me to repent for my sins."

"What a pompous moron," scoffed Zahir. "You don't need forgiveness."

"Everyone needs forgiveness." Beniamino sighed. "Many priests in Tyra are so crooked they make hooks look straight, but the one at the cathedral I went to services at was not among such rabble. I do feel guilty about deceiving him for years by acting as though I wasn't a Hibru anymore, but I will not repent for revolting against the Vox Populi, nor will I stop being a Hibru. To seek absolution for either of those things would be to lie, and I won't tell any more falsehoods. I've spread enough to last me a lifetime. Ironically, after all these years of lying, it is the truth about me that will really hurt the priest. I'm sorry for that, but I can't do anything about our incompatible beliefs."

"The priest has no right to urge you to cease being a Hibru," hissed Zahir, imagining how furious he would be if someone had tried to get him to betray entirely his Bazhir heritage. "There's nothing wrong with being one."

"The priest is just concerned about the fate of my soul," pointed out Beniamino softly. "According to his belief system, I have been guilty of perhaps the gravest offense. In his belief, I have joined the true faith only to leave it. As far as his beliefs are concerned, I have seen the fullness of truth and then closed my eyes to it. To his understanding, it would have been better for my soul if I had remained ignorant of the full truth rather than to have known it and rejected it."

"You didn't really convert to the religion of the Tyrans." Zahir's mouth pressed into a thin line. "All that is nonsense."

"Oh, but, by the definition of his faith, I had, and it is only the definitions of his religion that matter in his belief system," Beniamino corrected him in a hushed voice. "You must remember that I was guilty of deceiving him and every other Tyran by pretending that I was no longer a Hibru. I thought doing so was necessary to help my people, but I still do feel unclean for living a lie. To be honest, I think that the priest would be perfectly justified in hating me for making a mockery of his religion by pretending to believe what I did not. However, the priest instead is praying for me, visiting me in prison, and attempting to save my soul which he perceives as being imperiled. I may disagree with him about the state of my soul and about many other religious topics, but I will acknowledge that he is treating me with mercy and compassion rather than rage and loathing. His faith, in my opinion, is wrong, but it allows him to pray for someone who has wronged him, and that sanctifies him. I won't speak a word against him."

"I don't know how you can be so calm." Scowling, Zahir shook his head. "If I were in your situation, I would be screaming against the injustice of it all."

"I have accepted that I will die," murmured Beniamino. "As horrible as it sounds, I recognize that I can do nothing about that. All that remains to be seen is whether I will die at peace with myself and with the world, or whether I will be filled with hatred for everyone."

"You're going to be publically hanged until you're unconscious," Zahir snapped. "Then, you're going to be cut down, revived, and disemboweled. I assure you that your death won't be peaceful or dignified."

"I know how I will die." Beniamino's tone was still infuriatingly level. "Our internal peace and dignity cannot be taken from us without our consent. I can perish with peace and dignity because I know that I fought for justice and for my people."

"You don't have to die." Zahir gripped the bars separating them tightly. "I have a dagger I could slip you that would allow you to slice through the bars on your window and escape."

"Such a plan is far too risky to succeed and you realize that as well as I do," answered Beniamino with a trace of dryness. "No, it is the gods' will that I be here—"

"And is it the gods' will that you be executed?" Zahir demanded bitterly. "Do you reckon that the gods will be with you when you are hanging from the gallows?"

"The gods never abandon us." Unblinkingly, Beniamino kept his gaze fixed on Zahir. "They suffer with us, give us the strength to do the impossible, and find a manner in which to transform our worst defeats into our greatest victories."

"You are insane," muttered Zahir, feeling that Beniamino really needed a stronger self-preservation instinct instead of an unshakeable conviction that the gods would be with him even as his organs were removed from his still living body.

"Maybe by the world's standards." Beniamino offered a slight, twisted grin. "Although our cultures disagree about the name of the son who was to be sacrificed, I think both of us have heard the story of the ancient patriarch who was commanded by the gods to take his son to the altar on top of a mountain and sacrifice him."

"I've heard it, and, apparently, you have heard it enough to make you crazy," Zahir ground out, thinking that an escape plot was more important than theology at the moment.

"Hmm." Beniamino's glance pierced into him. "Then maybe you can tell me what saved the son."

"The ancient patriarch's faith, and the grace of the gods," responded Zahir dully. "Somehow, however, I don't see the gods intervening to prevent you from getting disemboweled."

"Neither do I, but, Zahir, when you surrender to the will of the gods, you acknowledge that their will, not yours, will be done." As he established as much, Beniamino's fingers reached through the bars dividing them to squeeze Zahir's hand. "The ancient patriarch didn't want to sacrifice his son, but he understood that he had to obey the gods, since, if the gods want an individual dead, there is no power in the world that can prevent that person from perishing. People cannot save each other, because we are all imprisoned in a world where life is nothing but an immersion in death. Only the gods can rescue anybody, but their methods of salvation occur in their time, not ours, and in their way, not ours."

"I might be able to save you if you would just let me try," grunted an aggravated Zahir.

"You have risked enough already," replied Beniamino. "It will be comfort enough for me to know that my death might inspire more Hibrus to fight for freedom."

"King Jonathan managed to convince Giovanni Medica to agree to reform the manner in which the Hibrus in Tyra are treated," Zahir said, wishing that the promised improvements were more extensive. "In the future, the Vox Populi promised to pay your people for work, to educate Hibru children in his schools, and to assign everyone jobs based on merit rather than on ethnicity. Obviously, it will take awhile for these measures to truly be effective, and Hibrus will doubtlessly be disproportionately qualified for the lowest labor, but—"

"It's a start," Beniamino finished, his eyes glowing. "A beginning is all my people need. You have given me hope for the future, which might have been all the solace I really required before I died."

"It's not fair that you won't be able to see the future you fought to create," observed Zahir, biting his lip.

"It's more than enough blessing to have knowledge that such a future could even exist," Beniamino informed him quietly. "Generations of Hibrus have lived and died without such an assurance."

Not certain how to answer this, Zahir was silent. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then Beniamino went on somberly, "Now, if there is anything else that I could desire beyond hope in the future, it is the knowledge that the past will survive."

"What would provide you with that assurance?" Zahir asked, feeling that, if Beniamino was so determined to die, the least he could do was attend to the poet's last requests.

"I happen to possess a copy of Hibru scriptures," Beniamino educated him, sliding a small book between the bars into Zahir's palm. "It would gladden my spirit greatly if I could be secure in the knowledge that I had entrusted it to you."

"I can't read your language," protested Zahir, flipping through the obviously old, handwritten book Beniamino had just bequeathed to him. "You should have me give it to another Hibru."

"We Hibrus have copies enough of our own scriptures, and what we need is for people outside our culture to understand it." With a hint of self-satisfaction, Beniamino continued, "As for you not reading our language, I have written the scriptures in Common over the years, and I will give that book of scriptures to you as well. Of course, without a full knowledge of our oral customs, one can never comprehend exactly what being a Hibru means."

As Beniamino handed him a newer, but also tiny and handwritten book, Zahir frowned down at the ink scribbled across the pages. "You aren't trying to turn me into a Hibru, are you? I don't want to be anything but a Bazhir."

"I'm not attempting to make a Hibru of you." Beniamino chuckled. "The Hibru religion is something passed along from parent to child. It is a culture that one is born into. As a general rule, Hibrus do not run around seeking to convert people. In fact, the traditional Hibru response to someone who asks to join the faith is to ask the individual three times if he or she is positive that he or she wishes to become a Hibru."

"As long as you aren't trying to make me a Hibru, I'd be honored to take the books," stated Zahir, gently tucking the copies of the scriptures beneath his robes.

"I thank you." Beniamino bowed his head graciously. "Now, I only have one more request to make of you."

"You have a high opinion of my generosity," mumbled Zahir, even though he really meant that he would do anything he could for Beniamino.

"I have a high opinion of you in general." For an all too brief moment, Beniamino's lips quirked upward in mild amusement before his features became grim, and he announced, "I wish for you to swear to me that you will not attend my execution tomorrow. Your presence will not make anything easier for me, and seeing the gory end that awaits me will only bring you heartbreak. It will be far better for you if you remember me whole, not as someone whose guts are being yanked out."

"I promise," whispered Zahir, even as his conscience accused him of being a coward for swearing to spare himself pain when it was Beniamino who would be executed tomorrow.

"Good." Beniamino's fingers squeezed his around the bars. "May the gods' blessings be upon you. Now, be gone, or the guards will get suspicious. Even the longest confession shouldn't be much lengthier than this."

Not having a clue how to express all the love and the heartbreak ripping through him, Zahir choked out, "I didn't know you for long enough."

Then, because he couldn't bear to hear Beniamino's voice any more knowing that the man soon would never be speaking again, nor could he stand seeing Beniamino when soon the poet would be dead, he pivoted and hurried down the dank, bitingly cold hallway toward the door the sentries guarded. Even though moisture was pricking like needles at his eyeballs, he refused to let any tears fall, since he understood that the sentinels would find it too suspicious if he bawled over the fate of a supposed traitor.

Only when he was a block away from the prison did he collapse on a bench on a practically deserted side-street. Forgetting his pride, he permitted himself to sob out all his sorrow that Beniamino, who was so noble, had been reduced to spending his final hours in filth. He let himself weep at the irony of Beniamino, who had worked so hard for freedom, being locked up in a dungeon. He allowed himself to cry over the fact that, once again, a good person was sacrificed for the wellbeing of an indifferent world while evil people went on living without any remorse.

This entire situation was unfair, and, no matter what Beniamino might have tried to believe to console himself in his final hours, no god could make what was happening just. Everything was so backward that no god could possibly turn it right side up again. Life was so impossible to understand that the gods must not be governing mortal affairs, or, if they were, they were doing an abominable job of it, and the average steward could do better running the universe than Mithros and the Goddess.

Perhaps the gods had decided to punish him for the blasphemy inherent in this mutinous notion, since, suddenly, before he could even process what was transpiring, he felt as if his head had been sliced through with an ax. A second later, his whole world consisted of nothing but agony, and his mind was a throbbing rainbow. Then the colors in his head parted, and he found himself melting into a vision that bore an uncanny resemblance to the memories that the king had given him during his Voice training.

_He was lying on a frigid stone altar on the crest of a mountain. The wind was blowing his hair about and cutting through his skin like shears. Ropes bound his ankles and his arms to the altar. No matter how much he tugged, they would not relinquish their grip on him, and, no matter how much he wiggled, he couldn't slip out of their hold._

_He was trapped, and, if he had known what being sacrificed truly entailed, he would never have agreed to this. Oh, and he definitely didn't want to die like this. His father might have called the gods merciful and loving, but no merciful and loving gods would demand that he be sacrificed like this. _

_A cold knife was placed against his throat, and he wanted to scream as he thought about the fact that it was his own father who was about to slit his neck. His tongue and mouth were too numb to move, however. He was going to die without so much as a shout or whimper. _

_He could feel the knife twitch against his skin, and he braced himself for bloody, blinding pain that would drown his whole world. Then, even though his father's blade hadn't moved across his neck, he thought that he must have died, because he could see Mithros in all the god's splendor. The god was telling his father that he didn't need to be sacrificed, after all. The god had just been testing his father's faith and obedience. _

_Then, before he could feel rage toward the god for testing his father in such a cruel fashion or gratitude to the deity for sparing him, he felt the frigid knife slicing through the ropes that bound him. Tears streamed down his cheeks as his father's hands enfolded him and dragged him off the altar._

_Perhaps because there was nothing to be said, his father did not speak a word. Instead, his father carried a ram, which was caught in a thicket by its own thorns and probably had been created by the gods just to be sacrificed, over to the altar. As he watched his father's knife cut into the ram, he thought that at least his father must love him, or else he would not have made a good sacrifice. He would focus on that, so he would not have to contemplate the fact that, even as he struggled, his father had been perfectly willing to slay him…_

"Zahir." A hand closed around his shoulder, and Zahir, blinking, found himself back on the bench with Lord Conan, who must have arrived during his vision, sitting beside him. Offering him a handkerchief that made him aware that he was crying, Lord Conan inquired gingerly, "Are you thinking of Trevor, lad?"

"Maybe, my lord," Zahir muttered, blowing his nose, since it was easier to imply that he was sobbing for Trevor than that he was wailing for all the good people who had ever been sacrificed and for all the sons throughout history whose love for their fathers had been entangled with fear and doubt.

"There are many mysteries of life that we will never comprehend while we draw breath," remarked Lord Conan softly. "Sometimes, we have to accept that we won't know all the answers, and that we don't need to know everything; we just need to be. In life, there is much darkness, but that just makes it all the more crucial that we be candles."

"Yes, sir," mumbled Zahir, mopping his eyes with his sleeve.

"Now, I was going into the market, since Trevor wrote in his diary that there are some excellent pastry sellers there," Lord Conan added, smiling slightly. "Would you care to accompany me? My treat, of course."

"Thank you, my lord." Thinking that the best pastry in the world would never even begin to compensate for the loss of Trevor or Beniamino, but that, if they were both as good as dead now, he had to live for them, Zahir rose, and decided that he would enjoy being treated to a pastry as much as he could under the circumstances. After all, there didn't seem to be much more to life than trying to remain optimistic in awful situations, and being hopeful when it was far more tempting to be despairing.

"No, thank you." Lord Conan's grin broadened. "Nothing gets me out of my own grief more than consoling somebody else."


	42. Chapter 42

Odyssey

A few days that felt much too long later, as he and the rest of the Tortallans boarded for their homeward journey the vessel that had transported them to Tyra, Zahir thought that he had never imagined that he would ever be glad to step onto the bobbing surface of a ship. However, this time, he was just relieved to escape Tyra.

He didn't want to spend a minute more in a land where all goodness seemed to be killed as a matter of course, every bittersweet ending was far more bitter than sweet, and hope always turned out to seem to be in vain. Tortall, despite its manifold flaws and the insanities of its monarchs, was a paradise compared to Tyra.

For some reason, he discovered as he stood on the deck that the waves of the sea no longer made him want to vomit. Perhaps he had witnessed enough real reasons to throw up in Tyra that his stomach did not deem churning water worth heaving up breakfast over.

_Maybe I've finally found my sea-legs_, Zahir thought wryly. Reflexively, he glanced to his side to share this revelation with Trevor.

A second later, he remembered, with a sensation in his gut remarkably similar to a stone sinking to the bottom of a pond after skipping just enough times to almost believe it could walk on water, that Trevor was dead. He wouldn't be whispering any more secrets or sharing any more discoveries with his dead friend, because that was part of what it meant to be dead.

Seeing that everyone around him was shuffling off to their quarters, Zahir noted with a pang that, now that Trevor was gone, he had no idea where he was supposed to go. Should he head back to the room he had bunked with Trevor in? Had their chamber been assigned to other people? Was Zahir shunted off to some other corner of the ship?

He knew that he could probably easily find out the answers to these questions by returning to the room. Yet, he did not wish to do so. It would be awful to learn that the room he had bunked in with Trevor was to be shared by other individuals as though Trevor had never existed, that he would have to bunk with someone else as though Trevor could be replaced, or, perhaps worst of all, that he would have to sleep alone in a room that had once been filled with Trevor's presence. Any scenario felt like a desecration of a room that had belonged to Trevor, and Zahir wanted no role in such a heinous crime.

"Squire." The king placing a hand on his shoulder jerked him out of his reverie. "You can stay in my chambers if you'd like."

"Thank you, sire," Zahir murmured, trailing after his knightmaster.

They crossed the deck, and then passed through a conference room decorated with colorful maps of the world on the walls and furnished with fine wood tables and chairs. Finally, they reached a room with a large, comfortable bed, a mahogany dresser and nightsand, a desk, and a sofa.

Even if the furniture was more jammed than fashion would have required, Zahir was just surprised at how many comforts could be crammed into a ship room. Thinking of how much everything weighed, he could only pray that the vessel wasn't swallowed by the waves. Truly, that would be an ignominious end for all aboard.

"The couch wouldn't make a bad bed," King Jonathan commented, nodding at the sofa, which had a decorative blanket strewn over its back.

"Your Majesty, you had a more comfortable couch than I did a bed on our voyage to Tyra," grumbled Zahir, while he sat down on the sofa and instantly found himself melting into the cushions.

"Maybe I should have invited you to sleep on the sofa earlier, then." His knightmaster grinned. "We'll have to remember that for our next odyssey, won't we, Zahir?"

"If I survive this trip, I'm not getting onboard another ship as long as I live for anyone including you, sire, and, no, I don't care how insubordinate that sounds." Determined to convey just how resolute he was about this proclamation, Zahir folded his arms across his chest.

Apparently not appreciating just how serious Zahir was, the king chuckled. "All of my courageous squires shrivel at the sight of the ocean. My Champion practically turns green when she sees ripples in a puddle."

"I don't know whether the Lioness or I would be more insulted by the implication that we have anything in common," snorted Zahir, deciding that now probably wasn't the moment to tell his knightmaster in just how low esteem he held the realm's only female (clearly not lady, because any real lady would have chosen another profession) knight. Then, before King Jonathan could affront him with any more comparisons to progressives or women (or, Mithros forbid, progressive knights who happened to be women), he went on tersely, "Anyway, if Trevor were still alive, I would have preferred to bunk with him."

"Of course," the king replied, his expression sobering, and Zahir congratulated himself on his knack at making any conversation he engaged in depressing. "I understand."

Even though King Jonathan claimed he understood, Zahir doubted this was the case. The king couldn't know what it was like to believe in the deep, tacit way in which feeling became stronger than thought that a room he had shared with a friend came into existence the day the friend entered it, was vibrantly alive while the friend inhabited it, and then blinked out like a candle in a thunderstorm the moment the friend left it. His knightmaster must never have experienced such a sensation, and nobody could understand something that had not been directly experienced.

It was this desire to prove to King Jonathan just how little he comprehended that drove Zahir to continue hoarsely, "No, you don't understand, Your Majesty. You weren't there. You don't know how he made being in our cramped room almost enjoyable. You didn't see how he could laugh wherever he was. You can't comprehend how he was able to turn that little room into a palace."

"Maybe not," his knightmaster responded, "but I do understand that happiness isn't based on material goods."

"Yes, I think we're all familiar with the cliché that wealth doesn't buy happiness, sire." Zahir couldn't prevent his lips from twisting into a hint of a sneer. "Well, wealth may not buy happiness, but it still helps a great deal, anyway."

"No, it doesn't." The king shook his head. "There are rich, powerful emperors who are less happy than penniless orphans. No matter what circumstances they are in, people have the capacity to be optimistic, and it doesn't make a difference how much a being has if that individual is not content with what he has. As long as a person is thirsting after what he doesn't have, he will not be happy. That is why it is sometimes those who, on the surface, appear to have the least reason to be glad are the merriest people of all, and why sometimes it is those who, at first glance, should be the happiest who are the most miserable."

"Giovanni Medica seemed happy enough, Your Majesty." Zahir scowled.

"Did he?" King Jonathan arched an eyebrow. "Or did he appear as though he was desperate to keep making money so that he could continue to host parties for people he didn't really care for, build cathedrals for a religion that he doesn't truly believe in, and support artists whose work he doesn't really appreciate very much?"

"Sire, I don't care about Giovanni Medica's personal happiness," snapped Zahir, his cheeks burning. "He oppressed the Hibrus. As far as I'm concerned, people who make a fortune off the misery of others don't deserve happiness."

"I'm not saying Giovanni Medica deserved happiness," his knightmaster answered. "All I am telling you is that the Vox Populi may not have been as happy as you imagine. After all, unlike your friend Beniamino, Giovanni Medica lacks passion. There is no cause he is willing to devote his life to furthering, and without a purpose, a life can easily become meaningless. Sometimes it is failing to truly live rather than dying that is the real tragedy. Everything depends on how you live and how you die."

"I'm not about to waste my sympathy on a scumbag like Giovanni Medica," Zahir spat, his dark eyes ablaze. "In case you've forgotten, he threw Beniamino into a foul prison. Then he had Beniamino drawn and quartered just because Beniamino dared to challenge the nonsense that passes for justice in Tyra, Your Majesty."

"I'm not saying you should sympathize with Giovanni Medica." Gently, King Jonathan patted Zahir's shoulder, and, after a few more incoherent sputters of rage, Zahir quieted. "Beniamino's death was terrible, but at least the cause he dedicated his life to was advanced."

"That doesn't make up for Beniamino's death." His throat constricting, Zahir shook his head fervidly. "He deserved to die of old age, and he certainly didn't need to spend his final hours in a wretched jail cell. He should have been able to give his final gift to someone besides me."

"His final gift?" The king repeated softly, his eyes narrowing. "What present would that be exactly?"

Recalling that his knightmaster had ordered him to accept and offer nothing when he visited Beniamino, Zahir mentally accused himself of being nine kinds of idiot for his slip of the tongue even as he tried to state as smoothly as possible, "Nothing important, sire. It was purely sentimental."

"I'm afraid it is important when I commanded you not to take or give anything when you saw Beniamino." King Jonathan's expression and tone hardened. "I need to know that my squire isn't involving himself in insurrections every time I turn my back."

"I just took copies of Hibru scriptures in their language and in Common." Zahir lifted his chin defiantly. "Is there anything wrong with that, Your Majesty?"

"Well, I would prefer it if you made a habit of obeying my orders instead of altering them to suit your advantage, but the gift that you accepted from Beniamino wouldn't have caused too much of a disaster diplomatically if you had been caught with it," his knightmaster informed him dryly. "You also fulfilled one of the last requests of a dying man by taking his present, so, in answer to your question, there is nothing too wrong with what you did."

"It wasn't wrong for me to accept Hibru scriptures although I am a Bazhir, sire?" Zahir asked, tilting his head inquiringly.

"I don't think so, Zahir." The king squeezed his shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with learning about the beliefs of others. To become more knowledgeable about other belief systems is not necessarily to abandon our own. Just because we study the beliefs of other people, we are not obligated to agree with those beliefs. However, learning about why other beings view the world in the way that they do often makes understanding them easier. This world could always benefit from more understanding."

"What if I have drifted too far away from my heritage, Your Majesty?" Zahir felt blood pounding against his eardrums as he remembered with a shiver his terrifying vision of a father preparing to sacrifice his son to the gods. "After I visited with Beniamino and took his copies of the scriptures, I had a horrible vision that was like all the memories that you have given me in the past. Maybe that happened because I was moving too far away from where I come from."

"Oh, Squire, that occurred since you are connected to the past of your people, not because you aren't," King Jonathan educated him in a hushed voice, tightening the grip on Zahir's shoulder. "The fact of the matter is that once I started passing along memories to you, they would continue to come to you even if I didn't give them to you. If you go too long without receiving a memory from me, they will come to you if you experience anything that triggers them."

"That's aggravating, sire," muttered Zahir, smashing his hand against his forehead as if he could bash out all the memories that he had been given so that he could live at peace in his own mind, knowing that sanctuary would never be violated again.

"That's what I thought when I was training with Ali Mukhtab in the desert," his knightmaster remarked, smiling slightly. "Whenever I got into one of my little fits of temper during which I didn't want the responsibility of being the next king or Voice, I would be very annoyed when the memories began flooding my head, nagging me to return to training that way. Now that I'm older, though, I realize that having a trigger system in place for the memories if too long a time between the reception of memories elapses is wise. After all, if a Voice dies while training a successor, which isn't supposed to happen since Voices are given visions of their deaths precisely so that they will have time to teach the next Voice, the successor will receive all the necessary memories. Even if a Voice dies before starting to teach someone, the memories should start invading the mind of the one who should be the next Voice."

"You didn't tell me all this before you began giving me memories, Your Majesty," mumbled Zahir, irritated.

"I told you that training to be the next Voice would be painful," the king pointed out somberly. "You couldn't possibly have understood at the time how agonizing mere memories can be."

"You could have tried me, sire." Zahir was choking on bitterness. "Since you didn't, I had to experience exactly what it feels like to be a human sacrifice. I had to learn what it is like to be tied to a cold stone altar, waiting for what felt like my father to slay me. I had to know how it feels to recognize that no matter how much I wiggle or tug, I will never be free of the ropes that bind me to the altar where I will die. I had to experience what it is like to know I am about to die and to desperately want to not die in that fashion. I had to learn what it is like to have someone who felt like my father rest a cold knife against my throat, and what it feels like to desire more than anything to scream, but to discover that my lips and mouth are much too numb for that. I had to know how it feels to know I'm dying without so much as a shout or a whimper. I had to experience what it feels like to brace myself for a bloody, blinding pain that would drown my whole world."

"Oh, Zahir." King Jonathan pronounced Zahir's name gingerly as though that alone should have been a consolation to him. "That's a hard memory for anyone to receive, but for you it must have been even more difficult. I wish I had been by your side when you received it."

"It doesn't matter, Your Majesty." Zahir gave his head a tiny shake as if he were dislodging a fly. "Lord Conan was there for me. It's funny that I despise the idea of diplomats so much, but the only two that I really knew in any capacity, I ended up liking."

"There are good and bad beings of every sort," his knightmaster observed. "Diplomats are hardly the exception to that rule."

"I suppose that you'll say that there are good and bad fathers just like there are good and bad diplomats." Zahir drummed his fingers on the arms of the sofa as his mind performed a number of somersaults. If that memory about the father sacrificing the son had taught him nothing else, it showed him that his struggle to define who his father was, who he was in relation to his father, and what the bond that existed between them ought to be was an ancient dilemma. The song of his life was one that had been chanted throughout all of history. In the final analysis, all sons had to reconcile admiration for their fathers with resentment for the crimes their fathers inevitably committed against them. All sons would be torn between a fierce desire for their fathers' approval and an intense fear of their fathers' anger. All sons had to balance the love and the hatred they bore for their fathers. All sons had to wonder whether the paternal hands approaching were intended to provide nourishment or to administer a blow. No sons could ever be certain that the men who had helped give them life wouldn't also rob them of it. Zahir's plight was one that was repeated throughout every age—only the details varied, but the general image remained unchanging. That was what the memories and myths of his people truly told him: that he was not alone in his confusion and suffering. "You're a father, sire. Would you have slain Prince Roald, Prince Jasson, or Prince Liam if the gods demanded that you sacrifice one of them?"

"If I tried to do such a thing, my wife would kill me," the king informed him, and Zahir could not tell whether his knightmaster was being facetious, but decided it was more prudent not to ask for clarification on this issue. "Being a father is more difficult than you think, Zahir. As a son, you only see the man who stood before you as a boy, whose words shaped so much of who you are, and whose presence or absence exerted a tremendous influence over you. You don't understand what an honor and a burden it is to be the man a child looks at like that. That being said, I will be the first to admit that I have asked my children to sacrifice much out of duty to their country, and I don't doubt that in the future I will request more sacrifices from them in the name of duty. In that sense, you could claim that I have already taken the lives of all of my children, and that I will take their lives again if necessary." Before Zahir could devise a response to this rather chilling assessment, King Jonathan sighed. "However, I would never literally kill any of my children. Being the actual agent of any of my children's death would be too much of a perversion of the role of a father as a protector for his offspring even for a pragmatic king."

"Beniamino said that the father in the story wasn't able to protect his son, Your Majesty," whispered Zahir. "He told me that the father was willing to kill his son because he understood that no one but the gods has the power to truly save anyone, and that, if the gods want someone dead, nobody can preserve that being's life."

"That is a perfectly valid belief, and it's doubtlessly a perspective that has been formed by his experiences," King Jonathan commented, his manner grave. "When you spoke to him in prison, Beniamino was only hours away from an ugly death, and that knowledge couldn't help but weigh heavily upon him. He also had to realize that he faced execution because he had tried to save his people from oppression. Perhaps he might even have subconsciously come to regard his actions as a minor usurpation of the gods, since, by trying to rescue his people from oppression, he might be seen as playing the role of a savior, and thereby attempting to replace the gods. At any rate, the fact that he was locked in a jail cell must have driven him to conclude that he was ultimately powerless to save his people from the poverty and de facto slavery they had been trapped in for centuries. My view—that I have power to save others, even if that power stems from the gods rather than from me—is likewise based on my experiences. I am a ruler and a mage. I have saved lives in both capacities, and so I know that I have power to rescue some people under certain circumstances, but not all people under all circumstances."

"In that case, you're saying that Beniamino is wrong then, sire?" Zahir pressed, shooting a questioning glance at his knightmaster.

"I'm not saying that at all," the king corrected him mildly. "Beniamino is telling the truth from his perspective, and I am telling the truth from my viewpoint. Neither of us is right or wrong."

"That's just a political answer to avoid the necessity of admitting that both of you cannot be right when you hold mutually exclusive opinions," Zahir scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Just state that you believe Beniamino was incorrect if that's how you feel, Your Majesty, instead of clouding the issue with diplomatic non-responses."

"I don't think that Beniamino is wrong, and that's what I'm trying to explain to you, Squire." His knightmaster shook his head. "It's like how the Bazhir story of the father being willing to sacrifice his son to the gods differs from the Hibru one in terms of the name of the son who was to be killed and in terms of whether the son had consented to be sacrificed beforehand. One account is the truth from the Hibru perspective, and the other is the truth from the Bazhir viewpoint. Neither is more correct than the other."

"That can't be true, sire," protested Zahir, scowling. "One trait that I really hate about progressives is their idiotic propensity to make everything relative. Truth must be absolute and constant, or else it wouldn't be the truth. If I insist that the ocean is purple and believe that with all my heart, that doesn't make the statement any less erroneous. It just makes me delusional."

"Philosophical and religious truths are far more subjective than whether or not the ocean is purple," countered King Jonathan, smiling wryly. "To equate one's personal beliefs with absolute truth is arrogant and dangerous."

"Your last argument is proof that relativists employ absolutes as much as anyone else, Your Majesty," grumbled Zahir. "Anyway, an absolutist would say that it isn't his personal beliefs that he's forcing on others; it's the truth, and the real arrogance is the conviction that the truth somehow changes based on our personal opinions."

"You talk like an absolutist, Zahir, yet you felt a powerful connection to and respect for the Hibrus." King Jonathan raised an eyebrow. "Do you see a contradiction in that?"

"No, sire." Zahir's jaw clenched. "Someone can easily posses the absolute truth while honoring the fragments of the absolute truth that appear in another's belief system. That seems perfectly logical to me. To be an absolutist isn't necessarily to be a bigot. Ironically, it would be rather absolutist and bigoted for a relativist to assume that was so, wouldn't it?"

"Possibly." The king's expression was unfathomable. "Doubtlessly such sentiments explain why conservatives and progressives are forever talking past each other."

"Not all conservatives are absolutists, Your Majesty," argued Zahir, flaring up indignantly.

"Nor are all progressives relativists," his knightmaster replied sardonically. "Some conservatives are relativists, and others are absolutists, just like some progressives are relativists and others are absolutists. As you hinted at earlier, some progressives can be quite adamant about not compromising on what they perceive as the absolute truth. The only difference between an absolutist progressive and an absolutist conservative is what each regards as the absolute truth."

"And is it better to be an absolutist or a relativist, sire?" demanded Zahir.

"Each has its pitfalls." King Jonathan shrugged. "Of course, it is probably rather absolutist of us to label anyone as either relativist or absolutist. With most people, relativism or absolutism probably exists in a spectrum."

"How much time do you sit around philosophizing when you should be governing your country, anyway, Your Majesty?" Zahir snickered.

"I am the Voice, Squire." Much too Zahir's annoyance, the king took advantage of the opportunity to mess up Zahir's hair with his hand. "Win that position in a raffle, I did not. My ability to see the heart of every issue is part of my royal mystique."

"The fact that you are crazy, sire, doesn't make you right," Zahir muttered under his breath as he tidied his hair.

"The path isn't always clear to me, even when I believe that it is." Once again, his knightmaster shrugged. "Like everyone else, even with the precognition that being the Voice sometimes grants me, I can only guess and dare. Whether I'm wrong or right, who knows? Sometimes wrong and right only have meaning in the short time, Zahir. In big time—in decades and centuries—then we see things are as they are, and there is nothing inherently right or wrong about how they are. Each choice might be nothing more than a branch of a tree, and what looked like a decision at the time might, after all, only have been a pattern of growth. Each act might be nothing more than a fossil, preserved in history."

"Somehow that didn't convince me that you were any less insane, my liege," snorted Zahir.

"Well, if I am insane, I should train you to be the next Voice more quickly," King Jonathan said briskly, and Zahir wondered if he was about to be punished for his impudence. "Besides, I feel like I should give you a happier memory to offset the one you received recently."

Silently, Zahir lay down on the couch, but he couldn't stop himself from flinching when the king reached for his shirt. Probably he would never be comfortable with the whole process of receiving memories he thought, as his knightmaster hesitated.

"Would it be better if you lifted your shirt, Zahir?" asked King Jonathan gently.

"I'm fine." Zahir pressed his lips together and stiffened his spine. "Go on, Your Majesty."

"You aren't fine." His knightmaster clasped his shoulder. "In fact, you haven't been fine since you were little."

"How could you possibly know such a thing, sire?" Zahir sneered dismissively, because that was easier than agreeing and more honest than outright denial. Even he had some understanding of the value of compromising, after all.

"I'm the Voice," King Jonathan reminded him softly. "I heard the cries you muffled into your pillow on the nights after you were beaten even if nobody else did. I wanted to be more of a comfort to you on those evenings during the communion with the Voice, but I couldn't. The only thing that would have been a balm to you—that your father loved you and could only really express that love by beating you—wasn't something I could tell you at the time. What any given Bazhir says to the Voice during the nightly communion is a secret between that particular Bazhir and the Voice. It is only because you are training to be the next Voice that I can reveal to you now that your father didn't enjoy beating you and that he just didn't know any other way to deal with you, since parenting lessons are a bit beyond the scope of a nightly communion with the Voice."

"Aisha told me essentially the same thing before I left for Tyra." Zahir's hands balled into fists. "Her words didn't make me feel much better about my father."

"Would it help if you realized that he was only raising you in the same way that his father reared him?" the king wanted to know, his tone quiet. "When people don't recognize what they are doing is wrong, their culpability lessens."

"How guilty he is removes no stripes from my back." Zahir glowered at the sofa cushions. "I suppose that you want me to find it in my heart to love and feel sorry for my father?"

"Whether or not you love or pity your father is up to you." King Jonathan squeezed his shoulder. "I am only suggesting that your father is not worth your hatred or your fear. Your father is dead and can no longer hurt you. Only your own hatred and fear of him can wound you now."

"You make it sound like hatred and fear are emotions that we can control, instead of feelings that dominate and destroy us without our consent, Your Majesty." Feeling tears of bitterness well up in his eyes, Zahir choked out through the knives lining his throat, "I'll never beat my children. They don't need to become wrecks like me."

"The fact that you want to spare your future children the anguish you suffered suggests that you are strong, brave, and compassionate, Squire," his knightmaster reassured him. "Those are hardly qualities I associate with people who are wrecks."

In response, Zahir said nothing, because there seemed to be no reply that he could make, and, when the king lifted his shirt, he didn't cringe. A second later, memory swallowed him.

_Heat was washing over him in rays. At first, the sensation was pleasant, making him feel warm, as if he had just arrived at a fireside after a long, cold journey. Quickly, though, the rays began to scorch his skin and the blood in his veins started to broil. His mouth thirsted for water, and his body poured out sweat in a futile attempt to cool him._

_Every breath was a battle, yet he had to keep moving, placing one exhausted foot in front of the other and not asking how long life could endure when every second of survival seemed to be a miracle, because he was at the head of a caravan of people relying upon him for guidance. _

_Desperately, aware that he and his followers were at the end of their ropes, he pleaded with the gods to save him and his people. It was the gods who had told him to lead his followers here, and the gods could not forsake him now. If they did, he and his people would perish in this lonesome, harsh desert. The gods had to have called them here for some more exalted purpose than torturous death. _

_The gods must have heard his cry, because, at that moment, a herd of wild horses raced across the sand dunes. When he instinctively raised his hand, the horses froze. Without so much as a whinny of protest, the lead stallion allowed him to mount it. _

_Feeling the strength coiled in the stallion's legs and knowing that he and his people were meant to control the unbridled energy in these glorious creatures, he called for his followers to mount the steeds. _

_Then, the wind blowing their hair as it did the horses' manes, the sand gliding beneath their mounts' hooves in a golden haze, and the sun burning through their clothing, they rode through the desert. They merged with their steeds, with one another, and with the desert. They became true Bazhir when they realized that they were as powerful as the sun, as enduring as the wind, as wild as the horse, and as unchanging as the sand. They became Bazhir the second they understood that ecstasy was nothing more than the blissful, out-of-body experience of riding a horse against the wind. _

"That memory was beautiful, sire," Zahir murmured, wishing he could have continued to charge through the desert like that forever.

"I thought you deserved to see that sometimes when we ask we do indeed receive," King Jonathan commented. "I felt that it would be prudent if you understood that while being the Voice can be almost unbearably painful at times, there are also occasions when the sheer joy of being the Voice is indescribable. While being the Voice connects us to all pain, it also links us to all joy. Even as we participate in all the tears of the Bazhir, we also share in all their laughter."

"I don't know how you can tolerate everyone's thoughts and feelings whirling around inside your head," remarked Zahir, shaking his head.

"Well, during the communion with the Voice, I am briefly outside of time, which makes the voices of the Bazhir in my head less overwhelming. With practice, the voices in my head have also become more of a chorus than a cacophony. Many voices tend to say the same thing. Almost everybody is suffering because of the actions of those who love them and whom they love back. Most people are hurt more by the behavior of their friends and family than by the actions of their enemies. Adults are upset because they argued with friends or spouses. Children are equally sad because they have been scolded or hit by parents or playmates. Most of the heated words and slaps resulted from minor problems that were somehow blown out of proportion. That is what I hear as Voice, and what you will hear as my successor. What I hear and what you will hear is human nature, not just Bazhir nature, but that knowledge won't make you or me feel any better."

"People everywhere should be more mature," Zahir griped, rolling his eyes in disgust. "There would be a lot less troubles in the world then."


	43. Chapter 43

Author's Note: Sorry if this chapter is short and cheesy. Blame it on final essays and studying for exams sapping my (never tremendous) reserves of creativity. Next chapter, hopefully, will be a bit longer.

Home Again

Two days after the diplomatic envoy to Tyra returned to the Royal Palace outside of Corus, Zahir found himself standing in the middle of a graveyard amidst a congregation of Trevor's family and friends, all of whom were decked out in mourning colors.

It was one of those late winter (or early spring; Zahir still hadn't figured out when exactly one northern season blended into the next) mornings that had broken with a cool effulgence, and there was a breath of burgeoning life in the air, something almost undetectable—a faint odor perhaps—that promised that spring was coming. A spring that Trevor would never get to see.

In the heady and sensual clarity of a morning when the gray oppressiveness of winter finally seemed to have been temporarily lifted, it was so hard to think of Trevor lying like a plank in the rosewood coffin, waiting to be lowered into the ground, and Zahir wanted to burst out crying because he knew of too much pain to be contained in a world as lovely as this.

Mentally, he raged at the gods for granting them such a glorious day on which to bury Trevor. The heavens should have been shedding vinegar tears for the injustice and cruelty that had turned Trevor into a corpse, instead of beaming down on them as though they were celebrating some merry nuptial.

Trevor's burial was taking place in a bucolic cemetery with stone benches, cobblestone pathways, miniature ponds that had recently thawed, and flower beds with buds that were poking tentatively out of the still cold soil. The lovely environs should have been soothing to him, but instead they froze the marrow in his bones. The fact that nature could persist in being beautiful without pausing to grieve at the loss of Trevor's vibrant life just proved how indifferent nature was to the fate of humanity and displayed just how little an individual existence mattered in the scheme of things.

As for the blossoming flowers, Zahir felt a special animosity toward them. Nothing should be blooming now that Trevor was dead. Life could not renew itself with Trevor gone. Of course, he pointed out acidly to himself, the budding flowers would be killed in the next frost. They were innocent and attractive, which meant that they were not tough enough to survive a taste of winter. They had emerged from the earth too soon, and they would be ruined as a result. Then again, maybe the only reason that flowers were beautiful was because they were so delicate. Perhaps anything that endured too long lost its value.

All in all, he found that he loathed cemeteries. This was the first one that he had entered, and, as far as he was concerned, it could be his last. The idea of people rotting beneath his feet was nauseating, and every arching tombstone admonished him that he could not evade death.

Trying not to think for possibly the hundredth time about how death had come for Trevor, Zahir focused his attention on the priest of the Black God, who would be leading the final benedictions over Trevor's casket.

The blustery wind blew most of the priest's words away from Zahir in gusts, but he didn't care, for the chunks that were audible to him did not inspire or comfort him much: "If you find yourself questioning your faith, remember that the gods who took Trevor away from you are the same ones who first provided him with the breath of life."

Maybe, Zahir observed dourly to himself as he watched Trevor's mother sob into her husband's shoulder, but why would you build something just to destroy it, unless you were a lunatic, and why should anyone worship maniacs? Why was it always the good people who died young, anyhow? How come it never failed that the best beings were brutally snatched from life too soon?

"Rejoice for those around you who have died and been born again in the gods, and who will dwell in serenity and security with their makers forevermore," continued the priest, and Zahir struggled to restrain a snort. The last thing anyone attending a burial for a funny, intelligent, and compassionate young man felt like doing was rejoicing. If anything was a sacrilege, it was that insulting and ludicrous suggestion. "Do not mourn them too much, for excessive sorrow at the death of another is indicative of greed rather than love. If you truly loved Trevor, let him go, and be consoled by the knowledge that he is resting in peace. Don't cry about how much you wish he were here beside you now."

Wishing that the priest was the one who was dead, Zahir attempted to ignore the voice of the representative of the Black God as the man concluded, "Praise the gods not only for giving life but also for taking it away. Death grants eternal rest, tranquility, and wisdom to mortals who have led virtuous lives. The pleasures we experience here are but shadows of the wonders awaiting us in the afterlife. The strength of the gods is proven when ours is gone."

As he thought that he was not about to become a believer in the priest's death cult, Zahir forced himself to watch as Trevor's coffin was lowered into the dirt. No matter how much he longed to squeeze his eyes shut, so that he did not have to witness this last, inexorable proof that Trevor was dead, he would not be guilty of such cowardice. After all, if Trevor was brave enough to die for him, surely he was courageous enough to witness the burial of his friend?

Besides, he reminded himself sternly, it was folly to be so convinced that burying Trevor in a hole in the ground would make him more irrevocably dead. Trevor was undeniably dead, and nothing anyone did could render him more or less so. Dead was dead any way you sliced it.

Still, something felt wrong about burying Trevor in a hole. It would have been better to see his friend's body quickly burned as was the Bazhir custom than to imagine it decaying underground. It was sickening to envision the worms feeding on Trevor's flesh when his ashes could be soaring to the Divine Realms in the wind, instead. Even though nothing could possibly hurt the body of a dead person, Zahir thought that burial was far more of a desecration than cremation could ever be. He might not have been certain that the Bazhir had the absolute truth, but he was positive that no other culture could be more right than the Bazhir were, and the travesty of what was happening to Trevor's body demonstrated that he was correct in his belief.

While he had been trapped in his own morbid musings, many of the mourners had drifted away now that the priest had concluded the prayers that ended the northern burial rite. Hoping that Trevor's parents were not the sort of northerners who instinctively recoiled as if a wet dog had suddenly leapt upon them whenever they spotted a Bazhir, Zahir approached Lord Nathanael and Lady Raquel of Marsh, who were dressed in black silk.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Zahir said, despising himself for the trite stupidity of his words, as Lord Nathanael patted the back of his weeping wife. The odious term loss made it sound like the lord and lady of Marsh had misplaced their son in a teeming marketplace, rather than had him kidnapped by the Black God. Trying to sound less inane, he went on, "I'm Zahir ibn Alhaz. We've never met, but I was close friends with your son for many months now."

"Yes, Trevor wrote to us about you," answered Lady Raquel, blowing her nose daintily into a handkerchief, and Zahir wondered vaguely if, at the convent, there were entire lessons devoted to that skill the way in page training there were classes dedicated to mastering the refined art of not confusing a dessert fork with a salad one. "It's nice to meet after we've heard so many wonderful things about you, dear, although, naturally, my husband and I wish the circumstances of our meeting were different. Trevor wrote to us that talking to you was a great entertainment on long journeys, and that your sense of honor always put him to shame."

"It was Trevor's goodness that was always putting me to shame." Feeling as though he were choking on his grief, Zahir glanced around him, desperate to change the topic, but, in the end, he could only devise a rather tactless statement. "Trevor told me about his family. He mentioned two older brothers that were knights. Are they currently on border patrol?"

After all, Zahir hadn't seen any young men consistently offering Lady Raquel support and consolation throughout the funeral and the burial, and no decent son would ever abandon his mother unless some larger duty demanded it.

"They're dead." Lady Raquel's voice was scarcely above a whisper and was almost swallowed by the wind ripping through Zahir's cloak into his skin and bones. "They were killed in the Immortals War. Trevor was our last surviving child."

"I—I am terribly sorry," Zahir stuttered out, wishing that there could be some words of solace he could offer to a couple who had now buried all their children, instead of being buried by them. "Trevor didn't tell me that."

As this second sentence spilled from his numb lips, a trickle of anger and indignation washed through Zahir's veins as he wondered what other lies Trevor had told him and what other secrets Trevor had failed to share with him. Perhaps Zahir was mourning for someone that he hadn't really known, after all, and no thought could cut him deeper than that, because now he would never have the opportunity to get to know Trevor better.

"Oh, I'm sure that Trevor never intended to lie to you, dear." Lady Raquel patted his arm as if she could read his mind as easily as a broadside. "I think, in his head, he was telling you the truth. He was just sharing with you one of those falsehoods a person repeats inside his mind often enough to believe it is true. You have to understand that Trevor admired his older brothers very much, and I don't suppose that he ever really accepted that they were dead. In his head, I think they were still alive, which is why he was always speaking of them as though they might come charging back home at any moment."

"Oh, I don't know what to say to you, my lady," Zahir murmured, discovering that he wasn't cross at Trevor, since Trevor had only been telling him a different, prettier imagined truth rather than the world's typical, harsh one. Trevor had only been telling him a falsehood that existed because Trevor couldn't bear the truth. It was hard to be mad at a dead boy who was unable to cope with the fact that his brothers had been slain in battle and so had concocted an alternate reality in which they were still alive for him to love and compare himself to. Perhaps that ability to sift through the rocklike realities of the world a little at a time—only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss—was what was responsible for the unique aura of peace that had always surrounded Trevor, and, if that was the case, it was hard to be angry at a gift that had kept Zahir sane. "To lose all three of your sons, well, I just couldn't imagine how dreadful that would be."

"I was so proud to have knights for sons," commented Lord Nathanael in a hoarse tone. "When Trevor's brothers died, I urged him to become a knight, but he stubbornly insisted on being a diplomat—"

"And I was glad," Lady Raquel cut in, wiping the tears from her cheeks with her handkerchief. "I imagined that he would be safe as a diplomat, but he wasn't. He was killed in battle, too."

"It's my fault that Trevor is dead," Zahir whispered, because he couldn't refuse to confess such a heinous crime to Trevor's distraught parents. "He died saving me."

"Oh, no, dear, it was only the guard who plunged a sword into my son who killed him," replied Lady Raquel in a hushed voice. "My youngest son. So clever and funny. Always so sensitive, too, unlike most boys."

"He wasn't bold like his older brothers," her spouse added. "I tried to toughen him up. I told him that he needed to be stronger and braver. I thought that would help him survive, but it turns out that he was valiant enough already, and that is why he is dead now. All I wish now is that I hadn't bothered him so much about his decision not to train to be a knight."

"Trevor wouldn't have made a good knight, anyway," Zahir remarked before he could halt himself, noting inwardly that Trevor would have been as incongruous in the pages' wing as a camel in the ocean. His tone taking on the full quality that voices did when they were expressing something that was long felt and long understood that would be released at last, he continued, "They would get Trevor somewhere on the front lines. There would be a lull in the fighting, and the next thing anyone knew, he would be negotiating with the enemy. He would joke around with their generals. He would borrow one of their uniforms and lend them his. He would get everything so scrambled up that nobody would know who to kill anymore. He'd make a horrible mess out of any war he attempted to involve himself in. After all, he was someone who didn't fight with words, nonetheless with weapons."

"You're probably right." Sighing, Lord Nathanael shook his head. "My youngest son was never very interested in the warrior arts. He wanted to stop all violence instead of winning fights. I was often impatient with him since I don't think I'll ever really be able to comprehend that attitude. I often accused him of being weak when maybe he was stronger than me and I'll just never be able to appreciate that. I should have told him that I loved him and that I was proud of the man he was growing up to be. I shouldn't have acted as though I had all of eternity to say such important things to him. After all, I should know by now that the bitterest tears shed over a loved one's grave are for the words and deeds that went unsaid or undone."

Gazing into the anguished, haunted expression in Lord Nathanael's eyes, which were the same ivy hue as Trevor's had been, Zahir couldn't help but reflecting upon his own relationship with his father. His father had perished transmitting the power that would allow him to be chief. That meant that his father had to have been proud of the young man he was growing up to be, or else his father would never have entrusted the well-being of a tribe to him. His father's heart had pounded when he hugged Zahir after his near-drowning in an oasis. That was proof that his father loved him. No pain, no separation, no loss—not even death—could end love. His father's love for him, even if it manifested itself in twisted fashions, could never perish. It was everlasting.

Like Lord Nathanael, his father must have only been trying to toughen him up because he loved him. Much like Lord Nathanael, words of approval must have evaporated like sugar on his father's tongue, but that didn't mean that his father wasn't proud of him. His father, like Lord Nathanael, was only a mortal man doing the best he could to raise a virtuous son. No one could blame a man for doing that.

"Trevor knew that you loved him," declared Zahir through the lump that had formed in his throat. "He told me so himself once. Anyway, even if he hadn't, a powerful bond of love and pride always connects a father and a son. Neither party can ever truly sever that tie, and, when it comes down to it, neither one would ever really want to do so."

With a mighty surge that echoed through his being like an ebbing tide, Zahir recognized that it didn't make a difference whether you forgave your father for the things he had said and failed to say and all that he had done and neglected to do in his time or your own time, or at his death or at your own. All that mattered was that you forgave him and comprehended that he pardoned you for not being everything he had dreamed you would be. In the end, it was only the forgiveness, not the resentment for the unfulfilled expectations, that brought the peace. If you wished to be absolved, you had to forgive. If you cared about being redeemed, you had to allow others to be redeemed in your eyes. Catharsis came from pardoning the sins of others, not seeking vengeance for them. Revenge was easy, and forgiveness was not. That was precisely why catharsis was so impossible for many to obtain.

"Thank you." Lord Nathanael's clap on Zahir's shoulder jolted him out of his contemplation of his epiphany. "That's more of a comfort to me than you will ever know."

"Thank Trevor," Zahir mumbled, flushing. His recent thoughts and words had indeed been inspired by Trevor, and there was no denying that. Perhaps, just like Trevor had never believed his brothers were dead, Zahir was likewise refusing to act like Trevor wasn't alive. After all, he was determined to remember Trevor, since as long as a person was thought about, that being continued to exist, and what was the point of love if it couldn't restore, in some fashion, the dead to life? At any rate, Trevor would be satisfied to know that his death had ultimately brought peace and healing rather than hatred and destruction. That would be the only tribute Trevor would have desired. "He is the wise one, not me. I'm just a fool, sir, and not even a holy one."


	44. Chapter 44

Challenges and Modern Values

The night after Trevor's burial, Zahir crept over to the Rider barracks. Scooping up a stone, he hurled it at the window of the room with a group of female Riders. A second later, he heard the pebble hit the glass, and the window be flung open. Squinting upwards, he saw Aisha, whose bunk, luckily, must have been located beside the window, thrust her head out. He waved at her, and she slipped out of the window onto the ledge, and began climbing down an oak tree, on which leaves were beginning to regrow after a long, cold winter.

"It's been quite awhile since we saw each other," Aisha murmured, wrapping her arms around him. They held one another close, their breaths looping together, for a moment, and then pulled apart, staring at each other in the moonlight, both of them searching for confirmation that the other was still whole. "Last week I was saving a village from rogue centaurs. Rogue centaurs are almost as good at archery as us Bazhir are."

"Almost, but not quite." Zahir smiled at her. "Nobody—mortal or immortal—can beat a Bazhir at archery."

"Exactly." Aisha returned his grin. "Anyway, I heard you got back from Tyra a few days ago. You should have visited me earlier."

"I was busy," responded Zahir tersely, shrugging, as his smile abruptly disappeared.

"Doing what?" Aisha inquired, her keen, dark eyes lancing into him.

"Moping," answered Zahir in a clipped tone. There was no way that he could speak about what had happened in Trya with his sister underneath a tree that would soon be arrayed in the all the splendid, verdant panoply of spring.

When vivaciousness sparked in Aisha's gaze, how he could possibly describe the wit fading from Trevor's? With life renewing itself all around him, how could he hope to explain to someone who had not met Trevor or Beniamino what it was like to lose both of them in such quick succession? Wasn't trying to describe either of them to somebody who had never made their acquaintance comparable to attempting to talk about the beautiful colors of a rainbow to a blind man?

"Moping." Aisha snorted. "Merciful Goddess preserve me, people always say that females are overly emotional, but, if you ask me, men spend far more time skulking around scowling than women do."

"Well, nobody asked your opinion, because you are both a female and an idiot, which marks anything you say as irrelevant and not worth listening to except for the amusement factor," he retorted, lifting his nose in the air haughtily. "Besides, for your information, I grew a lot as a result of my moping."

"Now you are trying to convince me that moping is a beneficial, worthwhile activity." Aisha giggled. "That's similar to when northern lords attempt to persuade their peasants that policy-making and tax-collecting are productive work instead of particularly perverse forms of institutional masturbation."

"A properly-reared Bazhir male or female wouldn't use such disgusting terms in casual conversation," hissed a scandalized, flushing Zahir, who could tolerate hearing bawdy terms from pages and squires, but not from his younger sister. "Laila would never employ such crass terminology."

"That's why I must use such words for her." Aisha grinned mischievously, and Zahir supposed that he could only be grateful that she hadn't claimed that she must actually do the deed the word referred to for Laila's sake.

"Laila wouldn't want you doing anything immoral in her name," he snapped.

"Maybe I know that." Aisha's eyes gleamed playfully at him in the moonlight. "Perhaps I am only pretending that I don't to annoy you, dear brother."

"Honestly, I don't know how Father could have preferred you to Laila." Zahir glowered at his little sister. "It must be because you inherited his stubbornness."

"Maybe it was," agreed Aisha quietly. "Perhaps it was also because Laila was always a more virtuous person than me. People don't like virtuous beings very much. Sanctimonious individuals are despised since, despite their perpetual holier-than-thou attitudes, they are never any better than the rest of us sinners. Truly righteous people are detested because they show us just how impure we are and how much better we could be if we only demanded moral excellence of ourselves. A person who doesn't have any principles or whose values shift with the wind, now that being will always be popular, and maybe that is all that matters to that person."

"Are you such a person?" Zahir wanted to know, his forehead knotting as he frowned at her.

"What do you think?" Aisha demanded, deflecting the question back to him.

"No," he stated after a moment's pause. "You have principles even if they might be misguided, and you cling to them with a remarkable tenacity. You are just a modern woman with modern morality, not a traditional woman who values customs."

"You sound as though that grieves you," she commented, resting her head on his shoulder.

"My mourning might just be for the day and its lax morality, and not for its woman." Zahir sighed. Then, changing the subject as deftly as he could and wishing that his tongue was as agile as his feet were, he continued, "Anyway, speaking of Father—"

"Were we?" cut in Aisha, arching an eyebrow.

"We were earlier, at any rate, and we are now," announced Zahir brusquely, nudging her in the ribs and deciding that any difficulty in conversational transitions was entirely her fault. "Anyhow, now that you've stopped interrupting me with useless questions, I want you to know that I've made my peace with Father."

"That's a wonderful," Aisha whispered, her fingers squeezing his gently, even though a second ago he had been as friendly to her as thistle. "The dead shouldn't be allowed to ruin the lives of those who are still alive, especially if they did a fine enough job at that while they were among the living."

"Sometimes it's hard to let the dead remain dead," mumbled Zahir, biting his lip. "In some cases, it's difficult to imagine that they aren't still alive, scowling over your shoulder whenever you mess up, and judging whatever you do against some impossible standard that only they really comprehend. It's weird to think that just because a giant has died, it morphs into pygmy without warning."

"The dead have a habit of seeming larger than they ever were in life." Aisha's head bobbed in understanding. "If anything, death transforms giants into demigods."

"That's why I had so much trouble making peace with Father," Zahir admitted haltingly. "For the longest time, I was terrified that if I released my anger at him, resentment of him, and fear of him, I would be empty. Hollowness, in my mind, would have been the only thing more horrible than the awful emotions whirling through me, because the only thing worse than feeling too much would be not feeling anything at all. When I finally let go of my fear, anger, and resentment, though, I didn't feel empty, but rather at peace with Father and with myself. I felt more complete than I had since Father's death. In the end, letting go of the wrongs committed against me instead of clinging to them like trophies or talismans brought me peace."

"You are lucky to realize that before your own bitterness turned you into a monster you would hate looking at in the mirror," murmured Aisha. Before Zahir could say it had been Trevor who had saved him from such a nightmarish fate, she went on in a soft voice, "Now that you've forgiven Father for all his flaws, can you love him?"

"I've always loved Father," blustered Zahir, sticking up his nose. "Don't waste your breath asking stupid questions, Aisha."

"Your love for him was always mixed up with fear, anger, and pride," Aisha pointed out. "Since he's dead and you have finally forgiven him for the abuses he heaped on you, I am asking whether you can love him without the fear, without the anger, and without the pride."

"Forgiveness was already more than he deserved," spat Zahir, grinding his teeth.

"Forgiveness isn't about giving someone what they deserve, and neither is love," Aisha reminded him in a hushed tone. "Both are about offering somebody a sort of redeeming grace that the person, strictly speaking, has not earned."

"Why should I love Father?" Zahir burst out, trying not to think about the father who had fed, clothed, and sheltered him, or the father who had taught him to ride, to fight, to shoot a bow, to read, and to write. "Because without him I wouldn't be alive to have the chance to hate his innards? Because he thrashed me hard enough to leave scars? Because he insulted me and criticized my every action?"

"Because he loved you." In the darkness, Zahir could just make out Aisha pressing her lips together firmly. "You should love him because he loved you."

"Life doesn't work that way, sister." Rolling his eyes, Zahir sneered. "Plenty of loving husbands and wives have committed suicide when they caught their beloved spouse in bed with another man or woman. Many girls have sighed after boys who wouldn't give them a second glance even if they were on fire. Loads of young men have written odes to the eyebrows of young ladies who are quite indifferent to them despite all the romantic rhymes. Just because you love somebody that does not guarantee that person will love you back."

"I know that." Clearly miffed that he perceived her as being dim-witted enough to require such an explanation, Aisha glared at him. "However, in case you have a very poor understanding of our family tree, Father was a member of our family, Zahir. Family members need to love each other when nobody else will. Sometimes love is all we have, and, many times, we can only rely on love from our family, so, if we don't have that, what can we possibly depend upon in a cruel world? Believe me, when families are loving, there is just barely enough goodness in life."

"You're asking me to be more loving than Father when I have already been more merciful than him." Zahir's jaw clenched. "That's not fair."

"I'm asking you to be a better, stronger man than our father, yes," confirmed Aisha. "I am telling you that you should not let your past cripple you. I'm suggesting that just as forgiveness brought you peace, love will bring you healing. Every father dreams that his son will be a better man than him, and every son longs to surpass his father. Here's your opportunity to fulfill both yours and Father's wishes. Don't let the chance slip right through your hands."

"You are wrong." Zahir shook his head. "Every son just hopes that he will live up to his father's expectations and not be a disappointment to the man who raised him, while every father just prays that his son will not be a disgrace to the family name."

"Hmm. You are such a pessimist, and I am such an optimist." Aisha flashed him a quick grin, so that her ivory teeth glittered against the black backdrop of night. "Maybe because you believe that the best each generation can achieve is not ruining what previous generations have created, and I am convinced that each generation has the power to improve the world, you are a conservative while I am a progressive."

"Since progressives are never content with the way things are, even when, as is often the situation, there was nothing wrong with how things were before they started meddling, I wouldn't say they are happy," grunted Zahir, who, after serving as the king's squire for quite some time, considered himself as much of a connoisseur of the progressive psyche as a conservative could be. "Anyway, you should know that all this love and turn-the-other-cheek-so-it-can-be-walloped-too stuff is very hypocritical when emerging from the mouth of a girl who fled from her tribe just to become a warrior woman."

"You don't have to love everyone." Slyly, Aisha shot him a smile that was nothing less than impish. "No, you just need to love your family members. You also don't need to love them while they are alive—just when they are dead so you can feel good about yourself and they cannot ruin your life from the beyond."

"The problem with debating with a moron is that the fool in question says things so illogical that they are utterly impossible to refute," grumbled Zahir.

"Well, if you can't argue with me properly, you should at least have the courage to accept a little challenge of mine." Aisha smirked, as if she was convinced that she was the most cunning individual in the world now that Ozorne was dead.

"What challenge?" Warily, Zahir narrowed his eyes.

"I challenge you to find a way to love our father," declared Aisha, sticking out her chin.

"What's my reward if I win this challenge?" Zahir folded his arms across his chest.

"You have the satisfaction of knowing that you have grown as an individual," Aisha chirped, her tone implying that this were a prize more valuable than half of the royal treasury.

"I already grew enough as an individual when I forgave Father for being so abusive," snorted Zahir.

"We must never stop growing as individuals." Aisha nudged him in the ribs. "If we stop growing, we stagnate and decay. Besides, if we don't grow as people, we'll never challenge ourselves, and if we don't challenge ourselves, we will never have any fun or know what our true capabilities are. It's always a terrible mistake to let our fear hold us back from achieving our full potential."

"Many people who once felt as you do now have probably discovered that achieving their full potential involved becoming Stormwing food," scoffed Zahir.

"Come now," Aisha chided. "Real men always accept challenges."

Scowling at her because she was dragging his male honor into this insane debate, he snapped, "Nonsense. Real men have enough confidence in their masculine identity to refuse pointless challenges that really might do nothing but boost their egos."

"Are you honestly telling me that you don't wish to boost your ego?" pressed Aisha, arching an eyebrow.

"I have a big enough ego already," Zahir answered, shrugging. "Most of my teachers would probably classify that as my greatest failing, because pride goes before a fall that will be made all the more humiliating by the excessive ego that proceeded it."

Now, he thought, he could see why pride was such a deadly flaw in a knight, and why, when Lord Wyldon detected it in a page, the training master tried to eradicate it. Pride not only prompted people to attempt to perform spectacular feats that they typically failed dismally at, but it also made a person very predictable. If someone insulted the pride of an egotistical person or suggested a method by which the ego of such a prideful person could be increased, that person would do anything—no matter how harebrained—to preserve or increase their pride. That tendency made egotistical beings like him easy to manipulate.

Similar criticisms could be offered about love, honor, loyalty, compassion, and a dozen other virtues, but all of those were necessary, and pride was not. A pride that flaunted itself must be replaced by a self-confidence that did not require external confirmation of its existence. Pride made a person a mere vapor in ever-shifting winds in the storms of life; self-confidence permitted oneself to set one's own standards and attain one's own, personal goals. Nothing could be much more liberating than that, and few things could be more exhausting than always having to keep up an arrogant façade for the rest of the world.

After all, Zahir knew from experience how tiring it was to create a complacent mask so that no one, even some like Joren he had once called friends, could guess how much he doubted his own value. If anyone could, he understood how much of pride equaled nothing more than self-loathing. Pretending to despise everyone else just reduced the odds that others would recognize that they were nothing more than scapegoats for his own self-detestation and self-doubt.

"I will not accept your challenge in order to boost my ego or to glorify myself in your eyes or mine," he said, feeling simultaneously as though he had delved a layer deeper into himself to a place he had never realized existed within him, and as if he were a million leagues away, dispassionately observing this conversation by supernatural means. "I will accept your request, though, since I love you, and it matters a lot to you that I try to love Father."

Zahir half-anticipated Aisha pointing out that she had only challenged—not requested—that he attempt to love their father. However, instead, her eyes suddenly sparkling like dew in the night, she rested her head on his shoulder again, and murmured, "I love you, Zahir. I love you so much that I want to make you the best person you can possibly be even if you already are a better person than I apparently give you credit for being."

"I—" Zahir's throat clogged, and he covered the awkward moment by messing up her hair with his palm—"love you enough to want to be better than I can possibly be for your sake."

It had been that way since she was born. When she was an infant, he had wanted to have strong enough arms to hold her forever, so that she would never have to feel alone or unprotected in a huge desert. When she had learned to talk, he had wished that he had the wisdom to answer all of her incessant inquiries. When she had begun riding, he had wanted to be a healer just so he could erase her bruises whenever she toppled off her mare. When she had learned to fear darkness in the tent after the sun set, he had wished that he had the power to transform her night into day. When she rode away from the desert, he had wished that he could make her want to remain in the land that should have been her home. It all amounted to a lifetime of wishes for Aisha, and none of them, so far as he could discern, had benefited her in the slightest.

The only reason he had started caring about her so much, he decided, was because when, as a baby, she had first gazed up into his eyes, he could see in her wide, admiring stare how much she had trusted him to care for and protect her. She had looked upon him with the adoration that a priest might display if visited by a divine entity. Her gaze had raised him up to far more than he could be, and from then on, he had felt a drive to prove that he was worthy of the faith that she had placed in him.

Remembering the crazy trust that had shone in Aisha's eyes the first time she gazed at him, Zahir thought that maybe it was this sort of feeling that motivated Laila's seemingly boundless compassion and that had prompted their father to beat them. After all, Zahir comprehended that every child idolized their father, and that it was hard not to resent the being who had shoved you onto a pedestal when you knew you were no hero and feared that you never would be. Love could be your salvation or your damnation, he supposed, and the line dividing salvation from damnation, at least in this issue, was perilously thin. Who could say what side he would ultimately fall on when both states warred for dominance deep inside him?

He was dragged back to reality when Aisha teased, "You should reserve your declarations of love for Cait. She's the only one who can stomach them."

"Is Cait in her room?" Zahir wanted to know, thinking that any night was a perfect one for a rendezvous with Cait.

"Yes, she's sulking because your ugly carcass hasn't been around to visit her in all the days since your worthless self returned from terrorizing the Tyrans." Aisha snickered. When he glowered at her, she only continued in an annoying sing-song, "Cait is actually away with her new squad, helping the Own defeat some nasty bandits, because some of us can survive without our men, you know."

"I'm not sure that I like the idea of her out there fighting." Biting his lip, Zahir recalled the sword plunging into Trevor's chest and tried not to imagine a sword or an arrow piercing through Cait's heart. There were a thousand permutations of death to be faced every time you set foot on a battlefield, and, even if you beat the odds of dying, there were still a million fashions in which you could be injured to contend with.

Cait could lose one of the vibrant, rust-colored eyes that glimmered more brightly than and were infinitely more valuable than any gem in the Eastern Lands. She could have one of the arms that Zahir loved to have wrapped around him chopped off. She could have her hands ruined, so that they could never grip his again. She could have her feet amputated, so that she couldn't run to him anymore. She could have her leg maimed, so that she could never ride with him or anyone else again. She could have her face scarred so severely that the constellations of freckles sprinkling it were no longer visible. Even if she just broke a bone like pages frequently did in training, it would be horrible, because he would not be able to squelch the harsh voice inside him that hissed that her body, unlike his, had not been built to be battered and broken.

"If you are going to force Cait to surrender her career with the Riders just to be your wife and the mother of your children, you should at least have the decency to let her do what she wants now without being an overprotective control freak," snarled Aisha, flaring up at him like a field of dry grass when a torch was put to it.

"Have the decency to let her do what she wants?" Zahir sputtered, his cheeks crimson with indignation. "Force Cait to surrender her career? I don't know where you received so many wrong-headed notions about my relationship with Cait. For your information, I never even asked Cait to give up fighting with the Riders if she married me. She was the one who said she'd be content to be my wife and the mother of the children the two of us could have together—who, for the record, wouldn't be just my children. Anyway, I never _let_ her do anything as though she were my horse or something. She does what she wants, but sometimes she just decides to consider other people's desires and needs before she thinks about her own. Perhaps you could learn something from her in that regard."

"Maybe," commented Aisha frigidly. "Still, my problem is that I can't see why it is always the woman who has to sacrifice her dreams in order to care for her family. Are the dreams of wives less significant than those of their husbands?"

"Well, it's pretty dumb to have killing people and watching your friends get slain as a dream," spat Zahir, his eyes scorching his sister's. "Those are my nightmares, Aisha, and if wishing to prevent Cait from experiencing those soul-ripping horrors is a crime, then I'm guilty of it."

"Why should you have to be the one to endure the nightmares?" Aisha retorted. "Why can't Cait be the one who lives through those horrors so you don't have to do so?"

"She's a woman." Zahir's jaw clenched. "Perhaps all the progressives yammering on about how women and men should be treated the same forgot to mention to you that women and men are different from each other. Men are born stronger than women. They are designed to protect and provide for their women and children. That's why, across cultures, men are the warriors, and women are the homemakers."

"Women are not weaker than men," snarled Aisha. "I doubt many men could handle the agony of childbirth, and if men had to deal with monthlies, I'm certain they'd be bragging about how strong they are for surviving such pain."

"Monthlies aren't that terrible." Rolling his eyes scathingly, Zahir waved a dismissive hand. "Broken bones, split lips, and saddle sores are all probably a hundred times more painful at least."

"Says the person who has never had to deal with monthlies." Aisha sneered. "Believe me, brother, if women, not men, had named monthlies, they'd be called 'my-period-of-bloating-and-cramping-followed-by-my-period-of bloating-cramping-and-bleeding-from-a-very-private-place.' "

"It doesn't matter." Once again, Zahir gestured dismissively. "The mere fact that you are using monthlies and pregnancy as arguments for the strength of women proves my point. Women are meant to give life, not take it away. They are designed to be nurturers and mothers, not killers."

"I don't know which gender should be more offended by your analysis of them." Aisha's lips twitched upward wryly. "Anyhow, I, for one, have no intention of ever confining myself to just the roles of wife and mother."

"Are you and Keir still courting then?" Zahir demanded, arching an eyebrow. "Is he willing to become a Bazhir? After all, as a Bazhir girl, you are only permitted to wed within the Bazhir."

"I don't plan on marrying at all," replied Aisha. "I only plan on having fun with Keir and anyone else I court."

"Courting someone without the hope of transforming the relationship into a permanent, marital one is prohibited to a Bazhir," Zahir reminded her sternly.

"I'm not really a Bazhir any longer," Aisha educated him quietly. "I've chosen to reject my heritage and embrace a northern one, instead. Now I can decide for myself whether I want to get married."

"Of course." Bitterly, Zahir pressed his lips together. "It's all about your desires, dreams, and needs, Aisha. Always it is about yourself, and never is it about others. Never is it about your responsibilities to your family and your culture. Now, it's a virtue to only be concerned with what the world owes you, rather than what you owe the world. No wonder society is in such chaos when the modern challenge is to be as selfish, rather than as selfless, as you can."

"Speaking of modern challenges, will you be attending the examinations for the pages tomorrow?" asked Aisha, who had clearly elected to change the subject instead of arguing the point for once in her life.

"I have to," responded Zahir heavily. "The king wishes to attend, because it makes him look like he cares about the realm's future knights, and so his trusty little squire will have to tag along like a useless appendage."

"It should be fun to see pages do all the things you would know how to do if you were actually competent," Aisha remarked, elbowing him in the ribs playfully.

"Oh, the tasks required of the pages could be achieved by any semi-intelligent ant," muttered Zahir, wrinkling his nose. "When my year-mates and I underwent our big examinations, a judge actually asked Vinson of Genlith what six plus six equaled, which even Vinson didn't need to grow two extra fingers to solve. All in all, the examinations are a comical waste of time for all parties, and they were only instituted because King Roald wanted to ensure that no more pages could hide their sex while earning their shield. Since women, thanks to the so-called improvements of King Jonathan are allowed to become knights now, the entire purpose of the examinations is eliminated, and so that just doubles the stupid futility of the examinations. Really, you are better off getting the extra sleep instead of watching the examinations if you have any choice at all in the matter."

"As always, I will take your advice to heart with a grain of salt." Aisha chuckled. "By the way, I have to point out that, no matter how much you detest the modern world, you are a part of it. You are a Bazhir training to be a Tortallan knight. If that isn't the definition of modern, I don't know what is."

"I'm also becoming the next Voice, which is a traditional post among the Bazhir," Zahir countered, as he frowned and his forehead furrowed. "Ancient custom and assimilation into the modern, northern world may be uneasily balanced within me, but at least I make some effort to preserve tradition. Someone has to do that in this world of too many and too rapid changes. Everything doesn't have to remain the same—although sometimes I wish it would—but everything doesn't have to be altered either, and sometimes it seems like everyone just wants to change things in the name of progress even when the changes are harmful rather than beneficial."

"People have been complaining about change for centuries," Aisha pointed out in a dry tone. "Your supposedly modern challenge of preserving customs is an ancient one that has been repeated in every generation throughout all of history. Perhaps that will give you some comfort."

"It doesn't." Zahir shook his head. "To me, it just indicates that things have continued to worsen throughout the ages thanks to foolish changes made by individuals who would like to think of themselves as enlightened."

"You could also say that the evidence suggests that life has improved as a result of reforms implemented by the progressive wisdom of each generation," countered Aisha. "Of course, you'd have to be an optimist rather than a pessimist to believe that."

"Or you'd just have to be an idiot," grunted Zahir under his breath. Before Aisha could debate this observation, he strode away from her, calling over his shoulder, "I'm going to bed. Don't have too many inappropriate dreams about Keir."


	45. Chapter 45

Stands and Rocks

The next day, Zahir was sweltering beneath a pavilion, watching as pages sweated their way through examinations on their classwork and field work judged by stuffy nobles whose deep glowers suggested that they had never so much as seen a smile, nonetheless offered one. Of course, at the moment, he didn't feel much like grinning either. Sweat was pooling in the creases on his forehead and in the kinks along his spine. The ruthless sun was shining directly into his eyes, because the stands for the spectators of the page examinations were all, conveniently, facing east into the morning sun, which was only getting obnoxiously brighter as noon approached.

Possibly, thanks to the unrelenting sun, he would be too blind to see the upcoming big examinations of the fourth-year pages. That would be a pity, as he was hoping to experience a fleeting, savage surge of satisfaction if the Lump misspoke when answering a history question or miss-stepped during a combat exercise. After all, the pleasure of witnessing the complacent Lump humiliate herself in front of a stand full of people would almost compensate for having to broil in the sun for hours.

At least, he told himself as he languidly watched the third-year pages slam arrows into targets any self-respecting senior page could have hit blind-folded while sleep-walking, he was under a pavilion. Not everyone in the audience was so fortunate.

Then again, he pointed out to himself wryly, perhaps he shouldn't have been so grateful for the shade and scant protection from the sun that the awning supposedly provided. After all, it seemed like more heat was attracted by the pavilion's bright fabric and that all of the heat that filtered through the awning was trapped by the pavilion's heavy cloths. Truly, he noted grimly to himself, northerners had no notion how to build tents, and he was suffering for their incompetence.

Neither, he added inwardly as he stared down at the stifling uniform his knightmaster had ordered him to don for the occasion, did they have any idea of how to dress appropriately for the weather, and he was suffering for that ignorance as well. The Lump had better make a real laughingstock of herself today, or else he would be a Bazhir on a rampage, rather than merely a scowling-menacingly one.

His attention was dragged away from the contemplation of his many grievances as the relieved third-years shuffled away from the center of the stadium, and the nervous fourth-years took their place before the packed stands.

Squinting against the shafts of sunlight piercing into his eyes, Zahir leaned forward in his seat and tried to spot the Lump. When he couldn't see her bulky, ugly frame, his forehead knotted even tighter and his frown intensified. However, it was Princess Vania who asked in a sharp voice, "Where is Keladry of Mindelan?"

"Probably putting on a gown that will only make her appear more hideous than ever, Your Highness," snorted Zahir spitefully, although he was glad that the Lump wasn't present. Her absence screamed not only to the monarchs but to the entire assembly that she was irresponsible and incapable of being punctual. Being this tardy, even if she showed up now, she would have to repeat all four years as a page. That would be enough to make even someone as thickheaded as her return to her home, where she belonged until some unlucky (probably blind) man could be tricked into marrying her. The Lump had embarrassed herself and killed her own dream. Nothing could be more enjoyable to watch than the Lump's destruction. "She's probably convinced herself that she is so important that we will wait while she dallies. She is always holding up lunch or dinner because she has to throw on a dress to remind us that she is, in fact, a female, as though anyone could forget that she's the Girl."

Zahir might have directed this assertion toward the princess, whose indignant flush at his words indicated that she still planned on joining the Riders, but it was King Jonathan who answered tersely, "If you don't have anything charitable or productive to say, Zahir, kindly don't speak at all."

"Anything I say that doesn't align with your views is uncharitable and unproductive in your opinion, sire," grumbled Zahir mutinously, as the queen gestured for the leader of the squad of the Palace Guard which had been protecting the royal pavilion from any highly improbable assault to approach her and her husband.

"Don't be ridiculous, Squire." Brusquely, the king dismissed this objection. "You can't agree or disagree with my viewpoint if I haven't spoken it yet."

"You can make your opinion known without speaking, Your Majesty, and you understand that better than I do," Zahir countered.

Before his knightmaster could respond to this charge, the leader of the Palace Guard squad that was patrolling the royal pavilion arrived, bowing to King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, the latter of whom commanded, "Please search the castle and grounds for Page Keladry of Mindelan. We are very interested in discovering her whereabouts."

"Yes, Your Majesty," answered the squad leader, bowing before the monarchs again and waving for his men to leave the pavilion.

Eyes trailing after the departing squad, Zahir mumbled, "With all due respect, Your Majesty, that squad is wasting its time. The Girl is probably in her room, panicking and tearing her hair out now that the big exams are finally upon her."

"It's highly improbable that someone who has survived four years as the first female page since the proclamation that women may train as knights, and somebody who has taken charge when a group of pages she was hunting with was accosted by bandits, would be overcome by nerves just because she faced some comparatively minor test," replied Queen Thayet coolly, arching an eyebrow. "In the unlikely event that you are correct, though, the squad will not waste much time. Her room would be the first place they would search for clues about her whereabouts."

"Keladry of Mindelan is a young woman with many enemies," King Jonathan added. "My wife and I wish to investigate if any of them have caused her absence today."

"By doing what, sire?" demanded Zahir, rolling his eyes. "Kidnapping her? If one noble kidnapped another, there would be civil war. Even the stupidest of her enemies aren't dumb enough to risk that over the Girl."

"You'd be surprised at just how idiotic some of her enemies can be," snapped Princess Vania with a ferocity Zahir hadn't realized could exist in an eight-year-old. "Some of them have their heads screwed on so backwards that they would resort to kidnapping in order to prevent her from passing the big examinations. Some of them wouldn't have any problem with breaking the Code of Chivalry just to stop her from becoming a knight. They would imagine that they were proving that women shouldn't be knights, but all they would be demonstrating is that they lack the nobility that should characterize a true knight."

"If she became a squire or a knight, she would just be displaying that she is gender-confused, and that, while she may love pretending that she is fulfilling her responsibilities to the realm, she has no idea what her true duties to the country entail, Your Highness," Zahir retorted, his cheeks flaming because he considered himself an enemy of the Lump's, and he was sure that the princess would define his hazing of the Girl as dishonorable, even though it had been perfectly in line with custom. Of course, if Princess Vania and her parents understood the value of tradition, they wouldn't even be having this debate right now.

"Oh, yes, because it's your job to tell everyone in the realm what their duty is exactly," Princess Vania spat, her hazel eyes narrowing dangerously. "Silly me, I forgot that you were divinely appointed for that role."

"Better me than an eight-year-old who sneaks like a thief out of her bedroom at night and throws everybody into an uproar." Zahir's jaw clenched, and he wished that he had never carried Vania back to the royal quarters that night so many months ago when she had been shivering in the bushes. "Why don't you enlighten us all about the obligations we have to each other, Your Highness?"

Vania, who had opened her mouth to snarl back at him, was chopped off before she could begin when her father held up his hand, ordering, "Silence, both of you. Nobody can think with you squabbling like chickens over grain. Since the excitement of the day has plainly been too much for you, Zahir, please return to your room now."

"You would side with her, Your Majesty." Uncertain whether the "her" he referred to was Vania or the Lump, Zahir pressed his lips together irately as he shoved himself to his feet, his blood raging with the shame of being sent to his room like a rambunctious toddler.

"I'm not taking anyone's side, Squire," the king educated him crisply, obviously interpreting the "her" as Vania. "In case it has slipped your notice, you are practically twice Vania's age, and so I expect you to behave with more maturity than her. That is why you are being sent to your room, and she isn't being sent to hers."

"Your Majesty always has an excuse for your unfairness." Bowing slightly, Zahir pivoted to go, but halted when his knightmaster placed a restraining grip on his elbow. "I admire your creativity."

"The disrespect for my wife and me has gone on long enough, Zahir," King Jonathan declared, his azure eyes searing his squire. "It ends now."

"Very well, sire," Zahir answered flatly, so that his manner couldn't be regarded as too cringing or too mocking. Sometimes, in order to preserve your honor, you had to make your tone utterly inscrutable, so nobody could understand exactly how you had intended what you said. Many times, to save your neck, you had to be both offensive and agreeable at the same time.

With that, he offered another bow, bending only so low as etiquette required. Then, lifting his nose in the air imperiously, he strode out of the pavilion, so that anyone watching his strutting departure couldn't guess that he was in disgrace. As he returned to the palace and made his way back up to his room, he maintained his swagger and his impassive expression.

It was only when he had shut the door to his quarters that he allowed his haughty mask to crumble as he sank down onto his bed. Staring blankly up at the ceiling and fiddling in his pockets just so that his fretting fingers would have an activity with which to occupy themselves, he muttered under his breath, "I'll probably receive a lecture about not arguing with royalty in public. You aren't supposed to do that. Royalty gets embarrassed when people confront them in public, especially when royalty is in the wrong."

He might have continued with a stream of complaints about the injustice of his situation if his fingers had not brushed against a smooth, hard surface. His forehead knitting in bemusement, he yanked the object out of his pocket and saw, with a small jerk of surprise, that it was the desert stone that his knightmaster had given him the day after the man had violated the sanctuary of Zahir's mind.

As Zahir's fingers closed reflexively around the rock, he felt a warm energy radiating into his pam. He was reminded briefly of the pleasant sensation that came from holding his hands over a cackling campfire. Then, before he was really cognizant of the shifting nature of the river of thoughts flowing through his head, he was recalling how it had felt to have his back pressed against another hot, larger desert stone…

_Zahir was seven-years-old, and he was swelling like a ripe pomegranate with pride and excitement as he rode with his father away from their tribe. The two of them were herding the family's sheep to a sacred location, where the lambs could be slain in the manner that rendered them pure and worthy for human consumption by Bazhir custom.(The time in his life when he would eat meat in the north that he was almost completely positive had not been slaughtered in accordance with Bazhir tradition was still so far in the hazy future that it would have seemed no more substantial to him than any other desert mirage, even if he had possessed the foresight to see the depths he would descend to in a few years' time.) Until now, he had only herded and sheared the sheep. Now, though, his father was finally permitting him to partake in the slaughter of the family lambs. He was about to take another step toward manhood, and he wouldn't allow himself to trip…_

_He was so ensnared in imagining his upcoming glory that he didn't notice the ominous whirlwind of dust and dry brambles swirling across the empty landscape toward them until his father, pointing a finger at it, shouted, "Sandstorm approaching!" _

_Like any Bazhir who could understand what those two words meant, that simple phrase froze the fire blazing eagerly in his veins into a terrified ice. His dark eyes widening like the black expanses between the stars in a nighttime sky, Zahir asked, "Should we return to the tribe, Father?" _

_He couldn't imagine not returning to the tribe. He couldn't picture not racing back to the family tent and huddling under a blanket while the sand and wind pelted against the canvas walls. In the past, when he had been tending to the herds or playing with the other children, the tent had been within running distance when a sandstorm was approaching. That meant that he had always been close to the calming embrace of his mother or Laila whenever a sandstorm reared its ugly, dangerous head. The idea of not being able to cling to their hands or bury his head in their shoulders seemed as foreign to him as a language which consisted of nothing except grunting. _

"_No time for that, Zahir," yelled his father over the gusts of wind that were now slamming into them, their flock, and their horses. _

_Numbly, Zahir stared as his father's hard gaze scanned their environs and settled upon a crimson-streaked boulder only a couple of yards ahead of them. So rapidly that he was at loss to comprehend what exactly what was happening to him, his father, who had dismounted, scooped him unceremoniously out of his saddle, and, before he had a chance to protest that he was quite capable of walking, carried him over to the rock._

_Shoving Zahir's spine against the stone, which was hot from the sun that beat down upon it every day, his father hissed in his ear, "Keep your head buried against my clothing and your back against the boulder, son. Close your eyes and mouth. Don't open your eyes or mouth until I tell you to. If you get too much sand in your eyes, you can go blind, and if you get too much sand in your mouth, you can choke ." _

"_Yes, Father." Not waiting to be told twice, because already sand was starting to smack against his cheeks, and there were few experiences except thrashings that were less comfortable than having sand scratching his eyeballs or tongue, Zahir hid his face in the fabric encircling his father's broad back. _

_After that, the impending sandstorm was upon them, and, as the wind tore at them, threatening to sweep them up in its madness, Zahir was convinced that the sky had fallen around them. That was why the wind was strong enough to hurl brambles at his hands and face, leaving behind bleeding cuts. That was why sand was whipping into those tiny gashes, diving up his nostrils,wormings though the cracks between his lips, banging against his eyelids, and boxing his ears more painfully than any punishing hand ever had. In fact, his eardrums were so assaulted that he could barely hear the sand ricocheting off the boulder behind him. _

_Amidst the chaos engulfing him, even though his back was pressed firmly against stone, his true rock was his father. It was his father's muscular frame that he clung to as the wind, sand, and brambles buffeted him, just as it was Alhaz who had placed his own flesh and blood between his son and the death and destruction of the sandstorm. In the years to come, Zahir would remember that when danger had appeared, his father had been willing to sacrifice himself to protect Zahir, because that was what fathers did—they shielded their children with their own bodies if they had to do so. Maybe the only reason that his father was so harsh on him was because the man had feared that he wouldn't always be around to protect Zahir, and he wanted to ensure that Zahir survived even when his father wasn't there to shield or save him. At any rate, if Zahir ever wondered whether his own father could have killed him, he could remember how his father had put his own body between Zahir and a raging storm. If Zahir ever doubted that his father loved him, he could remember that love was nothing more than risking your own skin to preserve another's. _

_Finally, the wind abated, as the sandstorm, in a maelstrom of dust and brambles, continued to blow across the desert. The silence that followed reverberated as resoundingly in Zahir's ears as the storm itself had. It took a shake of his shoulders for him to realize that his father, whose face was covered with sand and cuts, was speaking to him, demanding hoarsely, "Are you all right, Zahir?" _

"_I'm fine, Father." Zahir nodded and managed to choke out the words even as he spat out a wad of sand that had battered its way into his mouth through the cracks between his shut lips. _

"_Good." His father reached out a hand and wiped away the salty stream of tears that Zahir hadn't even noticed had trickled down his cheeks during the sandstorm. Unfortunately, his father's palm was covered with sand, and so Zahir's features only became more dirty, but the feeling of his father's callused hand stroking his skin soothed Zahir more than being scrubbed clean in an oasis could have. "When we return home, you can drink an entire glass of fresh goat milk." _

"_Really?" asked Zahir, twisting his neck to glance hopefully up at his father, and imagining a whole glass of fresh, creamy goat milk set aside for his use. Aisha would be so jealous that he might even end up sharing a couple of sips with her if she begged him incessantly. _

"_I don't make promises that I won't keep, son," his father told him, tugging him to his feet. "That's the only reason that my word means anything to anyone." _

"_A fresh glass of goat milk is almost worth getting caught in a sandstorm for," commented Zahir, his legs trembling slightly as he approached Sufia and was relieved to see that his beloved mare had not been injured by the debris hurtling around in the storm. _

"_Don't be stupid." His father's tone was stern, but the edges of his mouth had quirked upward slightly, as though he were amused by Zahir's remark. _

_It was that fact that gave Zahir the bravery to observe slyly as he mounted Sufia, "I'm being smart, Father, not stupid."_

"_Well, if you are too smart, you may not receive your glass of goat milk, after all, son," his father stated dryly, his mouth twisting into a faint smile now as he mounted his own horse. _

"_Father, you promised that I would get a glass of fresh goat milk when we returned home, and you just said that the only reason your word means anything is because you keep the promises you make," pointed out Zahir, grinning mischievously, and noting inwardly that he loved spending time alone with his father. _

_When nobody else was with them, his father felt like he could relax the harsh, gruff exterior he showed to the world. When no one else was near, his father didn't have to play the role of the stern Bazhir father, and he was less adamant that Zahir be the obedient son. By themselves, they could unwind and truly be themselves. Zahir could ask questions that bordered on the impertinent, and his father would answer with words rather than a slap. Zahir could crack jokes, and his father might even crack a smile. He loved his real father—the man his father became when there was nobody but Zahir around to judge him. What he hated was the severe shell that his father had to wear when anyone else in the tribe was around. His father's natural instincts—the one's that made Zahir's father interpose his own body between Zahir and the wrath of a sandstorm- as a parent were good, and perhaps it was only society's expectations of what a father ought to be that had ruined their relationship. Maybe their relationship was just doomed to be stilted because they had both been born into a tribe where it was far more acceptable to beat a son than to hug a son. _

"_Ah." For a second, his father's eyes glittered more brightly than the piercing desert sun in the vast, cold blue bowl of the sky above their heads. "However, I didn't promise that you would receive a glass of goat milk immediately after we returned home. If you want one immediately after we get back, you still have to be a good boy, Zahir." _

"_There would be a catch." As they rode off to gather the sheep that had scattered before the sandstorm, Zahir smirked. "Don't worry, Father. I'll be as good as a seven-year-old can be." _

"_Somehow that isn't too reassuring, as it isn't promising much, boy," grunted his father, but the man was actually grinning now, and Zahir exploded with laughter that was more about satisfaction that he had amused his father than about any cleverness in his jest. Even then, he had known moments such as this were rarer and more precious than diamonds, and he had been smart enough to treasure them accordingly…_

Zahir had smiled as he remembered how special he had felt when he had made his father grin. When he recalled with a horrible, icy finality that his father was dead and would never grin again, the smile flew away from his lips faster than a ghost.

Convulsively stroking the stone his knightmaster had given him, Zahir felt tears well in his eyes as he recognized what a fool he had been to resent and hate the memory of his father when he should have loved it, because it was all that he had left of the man who had raised him. He should have understood from his experience with Aisha how simultaneously terrifying and miraculous it was to be responsible for someone you loved more than your own life, and should have seen how that shaped every second he spent in his father's presence. He should have recognized that love forgave everything without having to be asked. He should have comprehended that the best kind of forgiveness occurred when you no longer felt like you had anything to pardon the other person for.

Finally, that was how he felt about his father. He no longer cared about how hard or how often his father had hit him. All he regretted now was that he and his father had not bonded as much as they should have in life, and now all that was left o them was the afterlife—if that even existed for either of them. Of course, he supposed that he would just have to have faith about that. Sometimes, in the shipwreck that was life, faith, no matter how seemingly unfounded, was all a person had to remain sane.

"I love you, Father," he whispered, touching the warm rock to his lips, as though the stone could somehow transport his voice to wherever his father's soul was, hopefully, finding rest at last. "Thank you for helping to give me life and for saving my life."

His head against his pillow, he thought that he could hear his father's voice whisper in reply, "I love you, too, son," and that splendid illusion, for now at least, was enough for his own agitated soul to find rest.

There was a knock on his door, and the purpose of the knock was promptly negated when, a second later, without waiting for Zahir's response, King Jonathan strode into the bedroom.

Before the memory of his father had finally brought some peace to his troubled, turbulent psyche, Zahir would have yearned to throw the king out of his room without concerning himself about whether the man's butt would ram into the doorknob on his flight out of the chamber. Now, though, only muttered as his knightmaster sat down on his bed, "If you want me to apologize to Vania, Your Majesty, I will."

"In your debate, Vania appeared to give as good as she got." The king's eyes twinkled down at him. "I think, then, that you only need to apologize to her if you wish to do so. I will certainly not be forcing you say that you are sorry to her."

"What are you here for, then, sire?" Puzzled, Zahir titled his head sidewise in an inquiry.

"To talk to you, of course." His knightmaster flashed him a quick grin, but Zahir, knowing by now that such smile from the king were intended to lighten the mood before an awkward conversation, felt his features become stonier. Perhaps noticing Zahir's hardening rather than softening expression, King Jonathan paused before continuing, "I feel we should discuss Keladry of Mindelan."

"With all due respect, Your Majesty, I think that recent events have demonstrated that we can't agree about the Lump." Zahir couldn't contain a sneer. "Maybe we shouldn't waste any more of our valuable time on her. She definitely isn't worth any more energy than what I have already invested in her."

"We need to talk about her because of that condescending attitude that you have toward her," explained King Jonathan, his face serious. "From now on, Zahir, you will not refer to Keladry of Mindelan as the Lump, or the Girl. You will call her by her proper name or rank. She is a human being, and you will treat her as such, instead of as something disgusting that you have just found on privy seat."

"You allowed Lord Wyldon to put her under probation." His lips itching with the desire to spit out every derisive term he had ever heard in relation to Keladry of Mindelan, Zahir glared at his knightmaster, thinking that he could see right through the man and his shrewd political motives. "No matter how much you defend her now, she will never like you, sire."

"Whether that is true or false, you will still not refer to her as the Lump or as the Girl in the future," the king informed him, looking utterly unfazed.

"The Lump and the Girl are tame names for her, Your Majesty," mumbled Zahir, sticking his chin out truculently. "There are plenty of far more insulting terms for her because of the lifestyle she, in her boundless stupidity, has chosen for herself."

"If I catch you using any of those names, I will wash your mouth out with soap," King Jonathan warned him in a wintry tone.

"Taking a stand on profanity in squires at this late date, sire?" scoffed Zahir, deciding not to remember how, as a child, he had feared sputtering on a wad of soap wielded by his mother almost as much he had the rod handled by his father. "I bet you never made such a threat to the cross-dressing freak _Sir_ Alanna, whose title is a clear indication of just how gender-confused she is—"

"Zahir—" his knightmaster began sharply, but Zahir, venting all his rage at the king he perceived at the moment as being the embodiment of all injustice, refused to subside.

"That's probably why she curses more often in a day than I do in a month," ranted Zahir, his hands balling into fists. "Of course, her profanity is fine, since she is so progressive, but if a conservative like me actually has the guts to call a girl what she is, that is an unforgivable sin in your eyes. Well, screw you, Your Majesty, because that's what you enjoy doing with your squires, isn't it? I mean, everyone knows you and Sir Alanna were fucking each other like jackrabbits in the spring when she was your squire, and don't even try to tell me that isn't gross."

"Squire," growled King Jonathan, clenching his fingers around Zahir's shoulder. "Control yourself, or I will guarantee that you joust one round against Lord Wyldon in every tournament scheduled on the progress as punishment for your insolence."

Deciding that he did not want to track Wildmage in order to be transfigured into a bird who could survive such a proliferation of flying lessons, Zahir lapsed into silence, although he persisted in glowering at the king, so that his knightmaster would understand that he wasn't vanquished yet.

"Now that you are listening to me, instead of letting your mouth land you in trouble, you should know that I don't deny that I treat you differently than I did the Lioness when she was my squire," the king went on, his manner milder."When I took her as my squire, I was much younger than I am now, and Alanna, unlike you, was at a similar developmental stage to me when she became my squire. The Lioness was my friend long before she was my squire, and I was a prince then, not a king. I hadn't married, had children, or grown into the man I was when I took you as my squire. I can't turn back time for you, Zahir. You are the age of my oldest son, and that can't help but impact how I treat you. All in all, you will never have the same relationship with me as Alanna did. You can either appreciate what you do have, or you can grumble about what you don't have. The choice is yours."

"I understand." Twisting his finger around a loose thread in his blanket, Zahir scowled. "Thanks for explaining that to me, sire. Now I know exactly where we stand with one another."

"Zahir." Gently, the knightmaster patted his knee. "You are the only person I will ever train to be my successor as Voice. That is a magical bond in every sense of the word that I will never share with anyone else. To me, that makes you invaluable."

"I'm flattered, Your Majesty," observed Zahir wryly.

"Good." Nodding in a fashion that made it plain he was electing to ignore his squire's sarcasm, King Jonathan stated, "Now, I would like to resume our discussion about Keladry of Mindelan. Lady knights are a controversial subject—"

"You're my knightmaster," Zahir interjected, all mulishness. "Aren't you supposed to tell me things I don't know already, sire?"

"I will if you don't constantly interrupt me, my impudent squire." Brilliant cerulean eyes lanced into Zahir as the king carried on smoothly, "Anyway, I understand that your religious and cultural beliefs will shape how you regard the topic of female knights. As Voice, I have the utmost respect for your religious and cultural values, Zahir, and I would never suggest that you should abandon them. That being established, I would like to ask you whether you honestly believe that you have the right to force your religious and cultural beliefs upon others?"

"Progressives like you force your moral beliefs upon everyone else when you claim that we shouldn't force our religious or cultural beliefs on anyone." Rebelliously, Zahir folded his arms across his chest. "Besides, sire, the basis of both northern and Bazhir law is nothing more than religious and cultural beliefs. You shall not steal your neighbor's prize horse even if it is ninety times superior to you own is a religious and cultural precept codified in both northern and Bazhir laws. You shall not rape even the prettiest, cheekiest girl you come across is another cultural and religious value expressed in both northern and Bazhir legal codes. You shall not murder even the most moronic of men is yet one more religious and cultural belief articulated in northern and Bazhir law alike. To pretend that almost every law in the north and in the desert isn't an expression of some cultural or religious belief is stupid or disingenuous. So, if you ask me whether religious and cultural morals should be forced upon people, I say yes, Your Majesty. The alternative is to allow robbery, rape, and murder to go unchecked. Religious and cultural beliefs together form the cornerstone of society. Get rid of the cornerstone of society, and it will crumble."

"The problem with your argument is that thievery, rape, and homicide all have a negative impact upon society," his knightmaster countered, arching an eyebrow. "I fail to spot how female knights wounds our country."

"When women fifty years in the future don't know how to cook, clean, or raise children, you'll see that female knights have utterly destroyed society, sire." Zahir gritted his teeth. "Oh, our families will be all messed up, but our genders will be equal, which, according to progressives, just means that women as well men fill the traditional roles of men, and nobody bothers to do the work that women once did. Living in such a way, of course, makes complete sense and definitely will not ruin the society that our ancestors created centuries ago."

"I'm shocked that you are still so dogmatically opposed to the idea of female warriors when your sister and the young woman you insist that you are in love with are both Riders," noted King Jonathan sardonically. "I can't help but wonder if you are merely biased against Keladry of Mindelan because of the altercations you had with her while you were a page."

"You can stop wondering, Your Majesty." Zahir's jaw tightened. "For the record, I have never supported either Aisha's or Cait's decision to become a Rider. Still, at least both of them joined a branch of the military where women were already integrated into the organization and so served as a minimal hindrance and distraction to me. They also didn't scream out to the whole realm that they were women trying to take the place of men, and they don't spend all their free time pleasuring any man who will have them."

"I don't suppose that you have any evidence that Keladry of Mindelan does any such thing," his knightmaster snapped.

"Evidence?" Zahir repeated, shrugging. In this matter, he was confident that his opinion was accurate, so any evidence was at best superfluous. "I don't need evidence that Keladry is the good time that has been had by all her so-called friends when there are enough rumors floating around the kingdom that all assert as much. Where there is smoke, there is a fire, sire."

"In other words, you have no evidence against Keladry of Mindelan's character," concluded King Jonathan frigidly. "Rumors of sexual misconduct on her part are enough for you to cast aspersions against her honor."

"If she was concerned about her honor, she shouldn't have sacrificed her reputation to try to become a female knight," Zahir protested, flushing.

"I would hope chivalry would prevent you from impugning the honor of a woman who, to your knowledge, is innocent of any sexual impropriety," the king upbraided him.

"A woman surrenders the privileges of her gender when she decides to become a knight." Stung by this reproach, Zahir ducked his head, but refused to acknowledge the point. "Your Majesty, if a woman insists on acting like a man, why shouldn't she be treated like one? Why can she demand to be treated as though she were as tough as a man in one breath and in the other complain about not being treated with chivalry as if she were a proper lady?"

"You can never extend your chivalry toward too many people, Zahir." Unmoved, King Jonathan continued his scolding. "Anyhow, if you wish to treat Keladry of Mindelan like a man, allow her the privilege of sleeping with as many partners as she likes, and of being congratulated, rather than tormented, for that."

"Humph." Zahir grunted. "Well, she already seems to have the privilege of sleeping with whomever she desires, sire."

"I'm glad insulting Keladry of Mindelan's honor makes you so happy, Squire." The king shot Zahir a scorching look, which caused the young man's cheeks to flame.

"I'm not happy," Zahir admitted on a bitter laugh before he could stop himself from offering this humbling confession. "Do you think anyone rips someone else apart because they're happy, Your Majesty? Do you reckon people are happy when they bully somebody else? Do you suppose they aren't ashamed that they have sunk so low? Do you believe that they don't feel even worse, not better, when they realize that they took out their rage on some victim, and that didn't even really remove their anger? Do you think that they aren't made even more miserable by the fact that taking out their insecurities on somebody else only made them feel less proud of who they are? Only those who hate themselves bully other people, and making others insecure is the last refuge of those who lack self-confidence."

"Zahir, there is no need for you to lack confidence." His eyes somber, King Jonathan wrapped an arm around his squire's shoulders. "There is certainly no cause for you to hate yourself."

"You weren't in the pages' wing." As though he were attempting to dislodge an irksome fly that had taken up residence in his hair, Zahir shook his head rapidly. "Sire, you don't understand that everyone there would eat one another alive if they could, and Lord Wyldon would only encourage that sort of behavior, because cannibalism would just reveal which beings are truly strong enough to serve the realm as knights. In that atmosphere, nobody could like themselves, since when your peers—whether friend or foe- weren't tearing you down, Lord Wyldon was."

"In that case, you might be interested in knowing that, near the beginning of your final year as a page, when I asked Lord Wyldon how you were progressing in your training, he described you as graceful both on foot and on horseback and stronger than you looked," his knightmaster announced calmly. "He even said that if all Bazhir fight like you do, he would not mind having another ten in training."

"Lord Wyldon was just being politically correct, Your Majesty." Zahir rolled his eyes. "He was probably wishing he could replace the word 'Bazhir' with the term 'sand scut,' or the slightly less offensive word 'savage.'"

"Lord Wyldon doesn't say things he doesn't mean, and he doesn't praise anyone he doesn't believe deserves it," the king corrected him."When it comes down to it, Zahir, you are a skilled warrior. You are also brave, passionate, determined, and far from being an idiot. I think you have an amazing destiny ahead of you, and you certainly don't need to bring others down in a futile attempt to make yourself look better which, in fact, only serves to make you look like you are a worse person than you truly are."

"Yes, sire," muttered an unconvinced Zahir, lowering his gaze.

"Look at me, Squire," commanded his knightmaster, lifting his chin with a gentle finger. "You don't even need to have faith in yourself. I, king of the realm of Tortall and Voice of the Tribes, will have faith for you. Is that enough?"

"It's too much," stammered an overcome Zahir, struggling to swallow the frog that had suddenly materialized in his throat. "I'm afraid I'll disappoint you, Your Majesty."

"Be yourself," King Jonathan told him, swatting his knee. "Don't be so terrified of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, or dying in the wrong position. Your instincts are better than you give them credit for, and you'll be much happier if you stop trying to be something you are not."

"If you say so, Your Majesty." Biting his lip, Zahir hesitated and then burst out, "You know, sire, you'll never be able to replace my father if that's what you're striving to do."

"I'm not trying to replace your father," the king educated him softly. "Even though I try to treat you like another son, I don't expect to be able to replace your father."

"Good, because nobody can replace my father," replied Zahir, lifting his nose in the air. Then, after a moment's quiet, he asked the question that had been gnawing at the back of his mind throughout their discussion of the Lump, "Sire, did the squad your wife dispatched find Mindelan?"

"I think Lord Wyldon will be giving a speech before supper in the mess hall addressing all you need to know about that business, Zahir," his knightmaster answered. "If you run along now, you shouldn't miss it."

"I'm off to collect the latest news in that case, Your Majesty," announced Zahir, pushing himself off his bed and striding out of his bedroom.


	46. Chapter 46

Author's Note: I'd like to apologize to all my readers for the recent sporadic update rate. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of personal, family-related issues that have caused me to be unable to be as productive of a writer as I normally strive to be. Given that these problems, sadly, are still ongoing, I regret to inform everyone that my slow update rate, as of now, still remains. (There will be updates, of course, but they will just not be rapid ones…)

Second Tries

When Zahir entered the mess hall used by the pages and squires, he immediately scanned the tables jammed with chattering boys for vacant seats. After a quick study of all the empty seats, he decided to fill the available space on the bench across from Yancen of Irenroha, instead of the spot near Garvey and Vinson.

Yancen was popular with all the pages and squires, which meant that he would be far better informed of the gossip about what was going on with Mindelan missing the big examinations than either Garvey or Vinson would. Also, unlike Garvey or Vinson, Yancen wasn't the type of individual that would be employed as a blueprint to build an idiot, which meant that any news he could provide would probably be far more accurate than any furnished by Garvey or Vinson. Luckily, the advantage of Garvey and Vinson being so blockheaded was that they wouldn't feel snubbed when Zahir chose to sit with Yancen instead of with them. After all, the subtlety of anything but the crudest and the most obvious insults usually needed to be explained to them by Joren or Zahir.

"Do you mind if I sit here, Yance?" Zahir asked Yancen once he had grabbed a tray of food, approaching the table where the other lad was twirling his fork around idly until Lord Wyldon arrived and offered the blessing.

"Join the party," replied Yancen, nodding a greeting as Zahir slid onto the bench opposite him. "Socialization is good for animals and squires, you know."

"Did you hear about Mindelan's absence from the big examinations?" Zahir asked without preamble. Even though he was prepared to bet his right ear that Yancen had indeed heard about this (if he hadn't been, he would not have chosen to sit with Yancen, after all), he figured it was as good an opening to the subject that really intrigued him as anything else. Sometimes it was better to get to the point than to dance around it for a whole meal.

"Of course, everyone, even my deaf great-uncle, has heard about that, and let me assure you that what my deaf great-uncle knows about the modern world could fit in an acorn top without overflowing, so something has to be major news to get his attention," responded Yancen. Then, shooting Zahir a sidelong glance, he commented, "I admit that I thought that you, as the king's squire, would have more recent and detailed information."

"I wouldn't be here if I did." Zahir sighed. "All I know is that the king and queen dispatched a squad of the Palace guard to track down Mindelan when she didn't show up for the big exams. I don't have a clue what the squad uncovered, though. King Jonathan would only say to me that all I needed to know about Mindelan's disappearance would be explained by Lord Wyldon's speech at supper tonight."

"Well, you already missed his earlier briefing about how two men kidnapped Mindelan's maid, so she was forced, by all the laws of honor, to rescue her maid instead of attending the big examinations," Yancen announced grimly. "That might have been the speech your knightmaster was referring to."

"Two men stole Mindelan's maid?" echoed Zahir, his mouth agape. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that the Girl's enemies would sink so low as to kidnap an innocent maidservant. It was against all the laws of chivalry to take hostages—especially if the hostages happened to be women or children—and it was immoral to punish a servant for the faults of her mistress. After all, while Mindelan might have surrendered all the benefits of her gender when she elected to take up arms as though she were a man, Mindelan's maidservant had never done anything to suggest that she wanted to be treated like a man, instead of a woman. It rankled with Zahir that anyone who opposed Mindelan for destroying tradition would forget the portion of the code of honor that protected women from being kidnapped to serve the politics of men. He didn't wish to be associated with such scum, because the fact that he had honor was the whole reason that he opposed Mindelan's attempts at achieving her knighthood.

"Yes, and Lord Wyldon strongly implied that a third man had hired the other two to kidnap the man," Yancen confirmed, nodding somberly. "I'll bet that the third man thought that he had Mindelan forked. I mean, if she went to the big exams and abandoned her maid, then the third man could tell the whole county that she didn't take her obligations as a noble seriously, completely tarnishing her reputation. However, if she rescued her maid, she would miss the big examinations and have to repeat four years as a page, which nobody is crazy enough to do."

"In other words, the third man was using Mindelan's sense of duty against her." Zahir scowled, vinegar replacing the saliva in his mouth. Getting Mindelan to give up her lunatic goal of knighthood was important, but it wasn't so crucial that it justified cheating. No satisfaction could be derived from winning if honor was relinquished in favor of what could only be a hollow victory. Hazing was an honorable, accepted custom, but kidnapping women and punishing somebody for actually having integrity weren't. "I wish my knightmaster had explained that to me, since it makes a difference in how I see things. If she didn't have a nervous breakdown, but was rescuing a helpless woman like a knight should, it matters. Then again, my knightmaster never shares anything important with me."

"Knightmasters." Yancen chortled, as if he found the entire concept of them ludicrous. "They're always yammering on for hours about stuff you couldn't care less about, but when you're actually interested in a topic, they won't tell you a thing about it that you don't already know. It's the very definition of infuriating."

"Are we complaining about the unique instructional methods of our knightmasters?" Joren's cool voice inquired, as its owner slid onto the bench beside Zahir without so much as a greeting or a by-your-leave. "That's one of my favorite subjects."

"I could complain that your knightmaster still hasn't taught you that it's rude to randomly insert yourself into the ongoing conversations of others," remarked Zahir icily, lifting his nose in the air. Although Joren was acting as though they hadn't argued heatedly when they had last spoken, he wasn't going to follow the other boy's lead. As far as he was concerned, Joren owed him an apology for calling Cait a slut and acting like a bigot. Until he received an apology from Joren, he was going to give the person who had once been his closest friend the cold shoulder.

"You should have learned from all the times Lord Wyldon jumped into the conversations of unsuspecting, grumbling pages not to say anything you don't want others to overhear," Joren retorted, and Yancen, whose forehead was crinkled in bemusement, was glancing from Joren to Zahir, clearly puzzled by the rift that seemed to have abruptly materialized between two old friends.

"Well, I can't wait for Lord Wyldon to arrive," Yancen put in, obviously hoping to defuse the tension between Joren and Zahir. "I'm hungry enough to eat a Stormwing."

"He should be here soon," muttered Zahir, taking care to keep his voice low so that he could barely be heard over the lively exchanges of the boys surrounding him, because, while he was confident that Lord Wyldon was not present, part of him still felt that the training master could hear any complaint made about him within a fifty mile radius. "Since he is the one who is always punishing us for being a minute tardy, he should make a point of being punctual himself, though. I mean, I know that pages and squires rate very low on the great pole of status, but still, he should set a good example for the realm's future knights."

"Well, he can rest assured that none of us will have the guts to confront him about being late," Yancen mumbled.

"Speaking of being late, it's a pity that Mindelan didn't show up for the big examinations," stated Joren, his dispassionate tone demonstrating how sorrowful he felt about the Girl's absence from the big examinations. "Now she'll have to go home, because even she won't be dumb enough to repeat all four years as a page."

"Repeating four years might not be as terrible as we all make it out to be. I'm sure it's easier when you've done it once. Maybe even Garvey and Vinson would be top students in their year if they had to repeat their time as a page, and we all know that both of them are so stupid that half the time when someone insults them, they misinterpret it as a compliment." Zahir's eyes narrowed as he scrutinized Joren. "Besides, aren't you supposed to be buddies with Keladry now that you've taken to being all smiles when she is around? Shouldn't you sound more devastated by what has happened to her and her glorious dream?"

Before Joren could respond, the door to the mess hall swung open. Everyone in the crowded room broke off mid-sentence, and, thinking Lord Wyldon had arrived, twisted their necks around only to discover that Mindelan was the newcomer. As the Girl picked up a tray and utensils from the servers, a quiet so absolute that no one seemed to be breathing filled the mess hall. It was only when she passed the squires' tables on the way to sit with some of her friends among the pages that Garvey shattered the silence by jeering, "I bet she hired those men to get out of the exams!"

"I knew she'd crumble at the last moment," Vinson added with a sneer. "Females always do."

Staring down at the food on his plate that was losing heat every second while he waited for Lord Wyldon to arrive, Zahir found that the words he had spoken only hours ago, which bore a revolting and uncanny resemblance to Vinson's, were ringing in his ears. With a nauseating feeling in his stomach that made him doubt whether he would ever eat again even when Lord Wyldon reached the mess hall, Zahir wondered if the king had been as disgusted by his half-baked theories about where Mindelan had been as he now was by Garvey's and Vinson's. Prejudice, he supposed, always made people sound like morons, and sometimes speaking as though you were undeniably correct just made you appear even more likely to be wrong.

As Mindelan spun around to glare at Garvey and Vinson, Zahir thought that he was done closing his eyes to pretend that he just didn't see the truth or covering his ears so he didn't have to hear it. Mindelan was a girl, but she had also been a worthy, honorable adversary. She deserved to be treated with respect. Although she was defeated now (because, no matter what he had said to Joren, he didn't think that anyone would consent to repeating four years as a page), she had fought valiantly, and that should be acknowledged.

"Who could be afraid of the big exams?" Mindelan asked Vinson and Garvey, her expression as deadpan as ever. "After all, you two passed them."

Gazing at Mindelan while several squires snorted or guffawed in amusement, Zahir couldn't help but thinking that it was a shame that she had been born a female. If she hadn't been born a female, she and Zahir might have ended up friends, which they could never be now that there was so much bad blood between them. After all, if she wasn't a woman, she would make a perfect knight, and she possessed so many traits that he valued in friends: honor, courage, level-headedness…

Oh, well, he told himself, you couldn't change somebody's sex, no matter how much the progressives liked to pretend that you could, and you couldn't alter history, even if you wanted to. You could only move forward into a future that had already been shaped by an immutable past. People were so much more powerless in altering their destinies than progressives liked to believe.

"When do you leave?" Joren demanded of Mindelan, apparently forgetting that he was supposed to act like Mindelan's friend.

"I won't," answered Mindelan in a clipped voice.

"You expect us to believe you mean to do all four years again." A mocking smile twisted Joren's lips.

"Believe what you'd like." Mindelan shrugged and walked away to join her friends.

As she disappeared, Zahir remarked, "With friends like you, Joren, Mindelan has no need for enemies."

"I was only ever pretending to be nice Mindelan and you know that, Zahir," Joren snapped, and Zahir remembered with more than a tinge of disgust how Joren had said that if his sweeter method of discouraging Mindelan from pursuing her knighthood failed, he would sting her when she least expected it, making certain that his sting was so damaging that the Girl would not be able to continue down the path to knighthood. "I explained that to you in the past."

"Well, if you aren't going to maintain your friendly mask, I don't understand why you bothered to sit with Yancen and me," commented Zahir spitefully. "The only reason you would sit with us would be if you didn't want to be perceived as Mindelan's foe. After all, Yance was never an enemy of hers, and since I realized that I had better purposes than hazing her to put my time to after her first year, nobody can really say that I am a strong foe of hers. Everyone knows that Garvey and Vinson hate her innards, though."

Before Zahir could speculate any further on why Joren might wish to still be seen by the world as someone who wasn't an adversary of Mindelan's, although he already had a theory that made his intestines squirm, the door swung open once again. This time, it was Lord Wyldon who entered. As he strode to the lectern, the entire assembly scrambled to their feet for the evening prayer.

"Mithros and the Goddess, we pray you, grant your blessing," Lord Wyldon began, and, with a jolt, Zahir noticed that, for the first time since Mindelan arrived as a page, the training master had included the Goddess in the nightly prayer. "Strip the veils of hate from our eyes, and the grip of bitterness from our hearts. Teach us to be pure in our souls, dedicated only to service, duty, and honor."

When Lord Wyldon lowered his hands, Zahir joined the rest of the pages and squires in murmuring, "So mote it be."

On a whole, Zahir thought it was one of the better prayers he had heard. It was short, but that suited him well, since there was only so much time he wanted to devote to the gods, especially when food was sitting under his nose, waiting to be consumed. It wasn't loaded with pleading or moaning about human depravity. Mostly, it was just a request to be made pure, which anyone could agree with, because having a soul dedicated only to honorable service was something anybody whose moral compass didn't point south would aspire to.

Still, as he sank back onto the bench and began to eat his meat, Zahir couldn't help but ask himself if Lord Wyldon hadn't experienced a revelation similar to the one that he had undergone when he heard that Mindelan's maid had been kidnapped. Such an epiphany would certainly explain a prayer like the training master's.

"The food isn't as good as it normally is after the big examinations, the entertainment is absent, and the fourth-years haven't been asked to join us squires," observed a frowning Yancen through a mouthful of sprouts. "Do you think that Lord Wyldon is waiting until Mindelan has taken her tests to really acknowledge the other fourth-years as squire?"

"Don't be stupid, Yance." Joren rolled his eyes as he shoveled chicken into his mouth. "Mindelan has already been given the opportunity to take the big exams, and she chose not to be present for them. Lord Wyldon won't see the need to make an exception for her. Ever since she arrived here, he has been looking for an excuse to kick her out of training. The only reason that he even allowed her to remain here after her probationary period was because he received royal pressure to do so."

"Lord Wyldon's fair." Zahir bit his lip, since he thought Yancen had raised a valid point. "Since her maid was stolen, he might believe that it is only justice to give her another chance."

"He'll probably want to follow the rules as they are written," argued Joren, shaking his head. "The rules don't say that you are exempt from being on time for the exams if your maid is kidnapped."

"Rules can't be expected to deal with every eventuality," Yancen pointed out as he took a sip of milk. "There's no rule stating you have to be alive to take the exams, either. It's another one of those things that is just assumed."

Before Joren could answer, the door burst open again, and Duke Turomot of Wellam, the Lord Magistrate and stuffiest of the page examiners, marched stiffly up to Lord Wyldon's dais. By the time the astonished pages and squires had all risen, Duke Turomot had conferred with Lord Wyldon and stepped up to the lectern, from which he glowered down at his audience, as though they had all plotted to steal his fief. Then, his voice sounding like an ax cutting through a rusty nail, he ordered, although nobody had made a sound, "Silence."

Not bothering to pause, as if he believed a riot would break out under his nose if he didn't continue quickly, the duke went on, "Evidence has been given, confession made. Two men were paid by an as-yet-unknown third man to force Page Keladry either to be late for the fourth-year examinations or to be unable to attend altogether. Said coercion being out of the control of Page Kaladry or of Lord Wyldon her training master, it is hereby ordained that in two days' time Keladry of Mindelan shall present herself in the First Court of Law of the palace in Corus at the second bell of the morning. There and in the practice courts she will be given the appropriate fourth-year tests by the regular examiners."

Despite the duke's legalistic jargon, Zahir found that he had no difficulty following the man. Apparently, the rest of the duke's audience also understood what the man was saying, because, at that moment, cries of surprise and cheers of delight reverberated throughout the mess hall.

In the din that suddenly filled the room, he heard Joren shout, "This is outrageous! Giving the Girl this sort of special treatment…"

"It is justice," snarled Yancen.

Zahir said nothing. Part of him could understand Joren's fury, but another portion of him really didn't mind that Mindelan was receiving a second chance. After she had saved her kidnapped maid, she probably really deserved an opportunity to pass the big exams without anyone sabotaging her by holding her maidservant captive.

Joren and Yancen were denied the chance to debate further when Duke Turomot, pounding his fists against the lectern, barked, "Order! Order!"

When the boys before him calmed down, he declared, breathing as heavily as a wounded horse, "There was no reason for this unseemly display. If any such thing occurs on testing day, I will have those responsible ejected from my presence." He scowled at them, as if to make certain that everyone comprehended the gravity of his message, and then added, "Heralds have been sent to announce the new day of testing. Furthermore, the one who perpetuated this defilement of the law and the examinations will be found and duly punished. With the guidance of Mithros, we will achieve a fair solution."

Recognizing the cue along with everybody else in the mess hall, Zahir mumbled dutifully, "So mote it be."

Satisfied that he had imparted his important news to a room packed with rowdy boys, Duke Turomot bustled out of the mess hall, clutching his robes tightly around his thin frame as if he feared some page or squire would suddenly attempt to steal his clothing.

As Duke Turomot left, Lord Wyldon replaced him at the lectern, calling out, "Provided that Keladry of Mindelan passes her fourth-year examinations in two days, we will hold the celebration for the new squires on that evening. Page Keladry, report to me when you have finished your meal."

"I was right," Yancen commented smugly, as the boys plopped back down on their benches. "Lord Wyldon was waiting to hold the celebration until Mindelan was given a chance to pass her exams."

Spotting Joren's expression, which was sour enough to suggest that he had just swallowed an entire lemon, and feeling a powerful yearning to talk with Cait about the day's madness, Zahir shoved himself to his feet. "I'm going," he told Joren and Yancen in a terse tone. 

As he departed the mess hall and made his way out of the castle down to the Rider barracks, he was grateful that dinner attendance wasn't mandatory for squires. Unlike the pages, he had the freedom to miss meals or to leave them early. Also, since he was the king's squire, when he left a meal early nobody would question his judgment. Everyone would just assume that he had some important business to attend to for his royal knightmaster.

As annoying as King Jonathan could sometimes be, there were some perks to being his squire, Zahir concluded judiciously as he reached the Rider barracks, and spotted Cait leaning against a fence, staring out at the dark purple horizon as sunset faded completely into night. As he approached, before he could even call out her name through his abruptly dry throat, she turned her head around to face him, as if she could sense his presence much the way a hound could scent a rabbit.

He didn't know which one of them moved first. All he knew was that a second after she spotted him, her palms were pressed against his back, his arms were wrapped around her, and their lips were brushing against each other, their mouths determined to use anything but words to say how much they loved one another.

As their lips and skin fused together, Zahir felt as though he were outside of time. The kiss would last a second, a minute, an hour, a month, a year, or an eternity, and it wouldn't matter, because, however long it endured, it wouldn't be long enough for him, and yet it still would have been enough to sustain him on a journey through the most awful places in the world.

Then, as his eyes drifted shut so that he wouldn't have to see in the darkening sky above them the passage of time, he thought that people closed their eyes when they kissed, when they prayed, and when they dreamed, since there wasn't much difference between any of those states, and the most beautiful things in life had to be felt with the heart, not seen with the eyes.

Finally, when both of them were flushed and breathless, they separated. Once he had some air in his lungs, Zahir asked, "Cait, how could you tell it was me approaching you? Do I have a special way of putting my feet down when I walk, do I have a scent that you can smell from yards away, or do I have some sort of weird breathing pattern that makes it obvious I'm coming?"

"You're just you."Giggling, Cait rested her hand against his chest, and Zahir could feel his heart drumming against her palm. "Your blood calls to mine, my breath longs to merge with yours, and my skin aches to touch yours. When my body is so attuned to yours, I'd have to be senseless not to feel the approach of my other half—the half that makes me whole—wouldn't I?"

"You flatter me." Zahir snorted, then wanted to know, "Have you heard about Mindelan missing the big examinations?"

"Yes," Cait replied, cocking her head sideways as she studied him. "I heard she was being given the chance to take them two days from now."

"She is." Zahir nodded. "She missed the exams because somebody arranged for me to kidnap her maid, and she wanted to rescue her maidservant."

"I'm glad that she has courage and honor unlike the person who orchestrated the kidnapping of her maid," remarked Cait, her rust-colored eyes simmering.

"It's wrong to take advantage of someone's sense of duty to those beneath them," Zahir agreed, his jaw clenching. "Anyway, taking an innocent woman hostage is a disgraceful violation of chivalry and all traditional morality. After all, Mindelan may have surrendered the customary benefits of her sex when she decided to try to become a knight, but her maidservant never chose to do any such thing. Nobody can take pride in winning if he doesn't behave honorably."

"Some people care more about winning than about their honor." Cait sighed. "That's why there are so many criminals in the world."

"People who care more about winning than about honor are morons," scoffed Zahir. "They don't understand that all the achievements in the world won't bring them peace. They'll only be happy when they don't have to hate themselves for being scumbags."

"You and I both know that." Gently, Cait taped his nose. "Not everybody can be as wise as we are, Zahir."

"I'm not so wise," he admitted, his shoes scuffing patterns in the dust that he couldn't see in the blackness engulfing them. "Just hours ago, I was calling her a host of unpleasant nicknames."

"Are you sorry about that?" Cait's gaze pierced into him.

"I guess," responded Zahir awkwardly, his cheeks flaming. "After all, Keladry of Mindelan is many things—and I certainly don't agree with her decision to be a knight and with much of what she represents to the realm—but she isn't a whore. At least, I don't have any evidence that she is, and that's the sort of insult that should only be used when there is proof to substantiate it."

"You've changed your mind at least about lady knights, then—I hope the new mind works better than the old one," teased Cait, running a finger through his hair.

"I'd like to see everything from your perspective, but I can't seem to get my head that far up my backside," Zahir educated her dryly, fiddling with a lock of her auburn hair. "Anyway, I'm still against the whole notion of warrior women in general."

"What did warrior women ever do to you?" asked Cait, as she nudged his shoulder. "I swear, Zahir, sometimes it's like you have a black-white mind trying to figure out a color-coded problem."

"It's not about me." Irritably, Zahir shook his head. "It's about all of society, Cait. Warrior women abandon their traditional obligations to their family. Fifty years from now, if warrior women have their way, females won't know how to cook, clean, or raise children. A generation from now, everyone will be doing men's work, and no one will give a thought to doing women's work. Both genders will be treated as though they are the same when they are, in reality, different, and society will be in more chaos than ever. Oh yes, warrior women will bring about the end of the world."

"Melodrama isn't your most attractive state, you know, Zahir." For a second, Cait flashed him a grin. Then, she sobered. "Anyway, society is far more flexible than you give it credit for, so I have no doubt that it will find a way for people to be fed, clothes to be cleaned, rooms tidied, and children reared even if there are warrior women. I also imagine that, even several generations from now, warrior women will be the exception not the rule."

Her fingers snaking around Zahir's and her lips dancing against his cheek, she whispered, "People could say that you and I are bringing about the end of the world by trying to marry each other. It's really very scandalous for northerners and Bazhir to marry, and for commoners and nobles to wed. We are violating two of society's greatest taboos by being together, my love. If anyone is going to bring about the end of the world, it's us."

"Well, if we are bringing about the end of the world, at least we'll be together when everything goes up in flames." Twisting his head slightly, he brought his lips to hers, kissing her fervently, and feeling her essence course from his mouth into his veins, where his blood pumped it to his heart, which would hold onto it forever as the force that ultimately kept it beating. Only when he was confident that he had blazed the sensation of her soft lips pressing against his into his memory did he pull away from her to ask, "My dear, do you believe in second tries?"

"Of course." Resting her head on his shoulder, Cait smiled up at him. "The gods gave humans memories so that we could remember our mistakes and learn from them. We don't have to get everything right on the first attempt. We have our whole lives to improve ourselves, and that's the whole point of existence. Humans aren't smart or stupid, good or bad, and right or wrong. They're a blur of being geniuses in some cases and absolute morons in others; heroes in some instances and villains in others; correct sometimes and woefully misguided in other matters."

"I know that, but that doesn't stop me from wanting me and everyone else to be perfect," muttered Zahir.

"That's why second tries are so important." Cait squeezed Zahir's fingers in her own. "Nobody would have any hope of attaining perfection if it weren't for second tries."

"I guess I should go take advantage of the second try system now," remarked Zahir, sighing. When it came down to it, he would have preferred to spend his time talking with Cait, but, deep inside him, he realized that there was a more crucial discussion he should be having with somebody else right now. Before he could lose his resolution, he gave Cait a quick farewell kiss and disappeared into the deepening night, heading back up to the palace.

Five minutes later, he knocked on the door of the king's study, telling himself that real Bazhir did not flee from unpleasant duties and true friends tried to save each other even if the one in danger didn't recognize how in need of rescue he was…

"Come in." King Jonathan's voice called through the door, and Zahir's last opportunity to retreat vanished.

Taking a fortifying breath, Zahir turned the knob and stepped into his knightmaster's office.

"Yes, Zahir?" Arching an eyebrow as he glanced up from a pile of parchment he was reading through, the king gestured for Zahir to take one of the chairs arrayed opposite his desk. "How may I help you?"

"Er, I wanted to apologize, sire." Clutching the arms of his seat tightly, Zahir observed inwardly that apologies were always a struggle to make. It was easier to be a jerk than to admit that he had been one. Confessing that his behavior during and following the page examinations had not defined his finest hour would be challenging, but, of course, he could console himself with the knowledge that it would be even more pathetic if that time had been his greatest hour. "I shouldn't have argued like that with an eight-year-old, been so rude to you when you were being rational and I wasn't, and cast aspersions against Mindelan's virtue when I don't have any evidence against her. You were right that Mindelan's absence had more to do with an enemy of hers than to do with her. She missed the big exams because her maid was being held hostage, and she felt duty-bound to save her servant. I can't blame her for that, and I can't agree with the decision to forsake honor and chivalry by kidnapping an innocent woman to punish that woman's mistress."

"I didn't think that you could approve of such cowardly, criminal behavior," King Jonathan told him quietly, and a small, almost undetectable amount of his anxiety evaporated. "You are a passionate person. Sometimes that causes you to jump to conclusions, and, as a result of your strong emotions, those conclusions, regrettably, aren't always accurate. I accept that, even if I don't always approve of that and even if I sometimes make it apparent how much improvement I believe is required in that element of your character. If I couldn't accept that shortcoming of yours, I would not have taken you as my squire or selected you to be the next Voice."

"Just because you care about somebody, you don't have to love that person's every action," Zahir mused, tapping his fingers on the wooden arms of his chair. His mind was deluged with images of himself and Joren: the two of them exchanging taunts and blows as they sparred in the practice courts, them elbowing each other in the ribs when they drifted off during Master Oakbridge's lessons (which never failed to test their ability to keep their eyelids open), them laughing over a joke at mealtimes, and them bending their heads together as they worked on essays or mathematics problems. No matter how dishonorably Joren might have behaved, and even though Joren had insulted Cait as well as Zahir's heritage, throughout page training, Joren had been Zahir's best friend. A special bond of sweat and blood had been forged between them over the years. Four years of sharing wisecracks and secrets, competing and helping each other, and quarreling and making up could not be erased by any insult or crime. "Sometimes you have to separate a being from a particular action of that person's. You have to love that person while hating what they've done wrong."

"Mercy is a wonderful virtue, but, in many cases, the most merciful thing to do is to point out to someone how misguided their behavior was. After all, it's not very merciful to just allow people to continue behaviors that are destructive to themselves and others." As he established as much, King Jonathan steepled his fingers pensively. "It seems to me that we are no longer talking about you, Squire."

"Maybe we aren't." Zahir's glance flickered down toward the floor for a second, and then returned to his knightmaster. "Perhaps we're talking about a wayward friend of mine. Sire, what should you do when you know something about a friend that would hurt your friend if it was revealed but might wound more people if it wasn't?"

"Secrets are difficult, dangerous, and sometimes even deadly." The king unfolded his hands and began stroking his beard instead. "Tell me, Zahir. Did your friend ask you to keep this secret?"

"No, Your Majesty, he didn't." Zahir's forehead knotted.

"Then, technically, there is no confidence there to break," his knightmaster stated, his expression grim.

"That's an advocate's argument, sire," growled an affronted Zahir. "In a friendship, the whole point of is that you don't need to request that the other person not blab your secrets to the entire palace as soon as you turn your back on them."

"Indeed, one true friend is more valuable than a hundred false ones." King Jonathan paused, and then went on, "In such a case, Squire, I would say that divulging secrets should never be an easy thing to do. It should be painful, because when secrets are revealed, somebody almost always is hurt. As such, I would advise you to tell your friend's secret if you feel like not revealing it will wound more people than divulging it would, or, if in the long run, revealing it will be more helpful to your friend than concealing it. Like I said earlier, mercy can occasionally appear more similar to harshness than to softness, and the greatest mercy can take the shape of telling someone just how unacceptable their actions are."

"Your Majesty, I don't know for sure that my friend actually did what I suspect he did," hedged Zahir, resisting the temptation to pummel his head with his fists. "Gods above, I shouldn't have these suspicions at all. Joren and I have been friends for years. I should assume the best of him, not the worst, because if I can't think the best of him who can? Of course, it's because I know him so well that I can't believe the best of him in this instance, and that's the most horrible thing of all."

"Squire, do you believe that Joren was involved in the kidnapping of Keladry of Mindelan's maid?" King Jonathan demanded, his eyes locking on Zahir's anguished face.

"I do, sire." Bleakly, Zahir nodded. "Many months ago, when we had just returned from our progress to the desert for the month of fasting, I had a disturbing talk with Joren. He explained to me that he was going to act all nice to Mindelan and attempt to convince her that she would be happier as a wife to some giant like Cleon of Kennan. He also told me that if that failed he would sting her when she least expected it, and that he would ensure that the sting was so damaging that she could not continue down her path to knighthood. Call me paranoid, but I reckon that arranging for Mindelan's maidservant to be kidnapped was that sting. I mean, if she missed the big exams, presumably, she would have to repeat all four years, which, practically, translates into her quitting, since nobody is lunatic enough to complete eight years as a page. On the other hand, if she went to the examinations, advertizing that she had neglected one of her chief obligations as a noble would rid her of just about every ally she has. Joren is smart enough to figure that out. That's why he was furious at supper when Duke Turomot told us that Mindelan would be taking her exams two days from now."

"Thanks for telling me all this, Zahir. You did the right thing in sharing this with me, even if you don't feel that way now," the king said gently, and Zahir noted inwardly that he felt filthier than swamp water. Betraying a friend's trust was wrong, and nothing could make it right, just as nothing could make holding a maid hostage honorable or acceptable. Evil spawned more wickedness, and he couldn't help but be caught up in the whirlwind, even if he hated being forced into the despicable roles of traitor and informant. "Of course, none of this is enough to secure Joren's conviction, or even to bring him to trial. It is the evidence that the two men who kidnapped Keladry's servant will provide under questioning that will end up determining who is held accountable for arranging the kidnapping of Keladry's maid."

"Does this mean that I don't have to repeat what I just told you to a magistrate, Your Majesty?" Zahir didn't know how he managed to pose this question when he wasn't breathing.

"No, I think that we can keep what you told me between us, since what you say is the sort of circumstantial evidence that wouldn't prove very useful in court," his knightmaster sighed.

"Good," commented a relieved Zahir. "I don't care for Duke Turomot. I'd hate to be trapped in a chamber with him glowering at me and attacking me with prying questions. When it comes down to it, I'd rather stare down an army of angry Scanrans than deal with him."

"I shall tell you a secret that you are strictly forbidden from sharing with anyone." Without warning, King Jonathan's blue eyes sparkled at him. "I don't much care for Duke Turomot, either."

"You should find some pretext on which to behead him, sire," Zahir advised unblinkingly.

"Ah, but, as he would be quick to point out, there is no precedent for that, Squire, and, anyway, somebody else would have to memorize every law book written since the realm's inception, which is no simple task, I assure you." The king chuckled. "No, Duke Turomot's neck is quite safe from royal wrath."

"Well, it was worth suggesting, anyhow." Sheepishly, Zahir grinned. Then, his face smoothing out again, he added, "You know, Your Majesty, I'm glad that Mindelan is being allowed a second try. She did the honorable thing by rescuing her maid rather than going to the big exams. Few nobles would act as she did, and she shouldn't be punished for actually behaving with integrity. I still don't approve of the idea of female knights, but I don't believe that winning that argument is important enough to justify dishonorable behavior. Hazing might not be nice, but it is an acceptable tradition in the pages' wing, but kidnapping is not. It goes too far, and it's always wrong to hold innocent women as hostages. Anyway, the point is that Mindelan acted honorably when she risked realizing her own dream in order to save her maid, and, under the same circumstances, I could only hope that I would behave with the same courage and selflessness."

"You would," the king assured him. "Never forget, Zahir, that you were willing to be severely beaten in order to spare your younger sister pain."

"It's mortifying that you know about that, sire," grumbled Zahir, studying his feet and trying not to remember all the nights, during the communion with the Voice, when he had pressed his face against his pillow as the tears streamed down his cheeks after a thrashing.

"Squire, sometimes people are at their strongest when they seem their frailest and at their best when they appear to be at their worst," his knightmaster remarked, his voice hushed. "You don't have to be ashamed for crying when you allowed yourself to suffer to save someone else from agony."

"Well, Your Majesty, it was my father who taught me how to sacrifice myself to protect others, and to risk my own neck to preserve the skin of others." Zahir offered a crooked smile, remembering the memory of his father that had filled his mind only hours ago.

"He taught you well, then." His knightmaster waved a hand in dismissal. "Now, get some sleep. Even the country's most amazing heroes need to rest after a long day."


	47. Chapter 47

For Honor

For the next three days, apart from the time he spent training and attending to his duties as a squire, Zahir locked himself in his room. He wanted to confront Joren with his suspicions, but, horribly, he lacked the requisite courage to do so. He was afraid that Joren would solidify his suspicions into a reality he couldn't face, or, possibly worse still, deny what Zahir, deep down, believed to be true.

When it came down to it, he was too scared to take the plunge from knowledge into truth. As such, he wasn't worthy of being a Bazhir, since no Bazhir should ever close his eyes to the truth and act as if the truth somehow didn't exist because he couldn't see it.

In the final analysis, he was a disgrace to his people. That meant that he could scarcely manage to meet his eyes in the water in his wash basin. If he could barely look at himself, he could never muster the nerve to meet Aisha's or Cait's gaze, and so he didn't visit either of them.

On the occasions that he was stricken by guilt for cutting himself off from them, he reminded himself that they had lives beyond him. Unlike them, he didn't have a life. During many of the hours he imprisoned himself in his bedroom, he was filled with a powerful listlessness that compelled him to pace the confines of his chamber endlessly, berating himself for not having the bravery to confront the truth and attempting to bully his feet into carrying him to Joren's room.

When he wasn't pacing his bedchamber like a caged lion, he was overcome with a lethargy so intense that any activity beyond sprawling himself on his bed seemed to be an overexertion.

He was lying on his bed in one of his languid modes when a sharp rap sounded on his door.

"Come in," he called, noting inwardly that talking required more energy than he was really disposed to squander on anyone at the present.

The door swung open, revealing is knightmaster, who addressed him briskly, "Up you go now, Squire. You're not wasting another day of your life in this room. We're going on an adventure."

"An adventure to where, sire?" Zahir inquired. Under other circumstances, he would have arched an eyebrow, but, right now, that demanded more energy than his body possessed.

"We're going on a tour of Princess Shinkokami's new chambers with my wife, Princess Vania, and Lady Cythera," explained King Jonathan. "Now, get a move on. It's not polite to keep ladies waiting."

"I didn't know that I had such an interest in interior design," mumbled Zahir. "Can't you just tell the lovely ladies that I won't be joining in the fun, even though I do find indoor decoration simply fascinating, because I, unfortunately, have a prior appointment with myself at that time?"

"As an intelligent individual you, of course, are curious about everything." The king's blue eyes twinkled at him. "You'll enjoy a tour of Princess Shinkokami's new rooms more than resting on your bed like a wart on a frog, at any rate."

"Very well, Your Majesty." Sighing gustily, Zahir pushed himself to his feet. "I'll come with you if only to stop your nagging."

"Negative reinforcement is one of the mightiest weapons in a knightmaster's arsenal," commented a smiling King Jonathan as Zahir followed him out of the room.

"I thought that negative reinforcement and punishment were the same thing, sire," muttered a perplexed Zahir, shutting the door behind them.

"Not at all." The king shook his head as they headed toward a parlor in the royal quarters. "Punishment is an unfavorable consequence for an action intended to discourage that behavior. Negative reinforcement is the removal of something unpleasant as a result of performing a certain behavior, and the removal of something disagreeable is intended to encourage an action. Punishment and negative reinforcement have completely different goals."

"I don't suppose that squires can use negative reinforcement with their knightmasters," grumbled Zahir, as they arrived in the parlor, where Queen Thayet, Princess Vania, and Lady Cythera were sitting on divans, presumably waiting for the king and his squire to join them.

"Are we all ready, then?" Queen Thayet asked as she, Lady Cythera, and Princess Vania all rose from their sofas. Without waiting for a reply, she inclined her head graciously toward Lady Cythera. "Please lead on, my lady. After all, this is your project."

"Of course, Your Majesty." Lady Cythera curtsied and then guided them out of the parlor, into the hallway outside the royal quarters, and down another corridor.

She paused outside elegant double doors engraved with flowers. Curtsying once again, she said, "I hope my humble efforts find favor with Your Majesties." Then, she threw open the doors, and they stepped into Princess Shinkokami's chambers.

As he entered, trailing somewhat unenthusiastically in the wake of Princess Vania, Zahir's feet rustled against the silk white rug on the floor. Glancing around the room, his eyes alighted with satisfaction upon the black pillows on the carpet, and the low tables situated throughout the chamber. As far as he was concerned, any Yamani fixtures that reminded him of the desert that was his true home were a welcome addition to the Royal Palace.

Of course, there were still elements of the décor that struck him as distinctly foreign. For instance, the rice paper partitions dividing Princess Shinkokami's bedchamber, dressing room, and parlor were definitely different from anything that Zahir would have encountered in the desert. The waving porcelain cats located on the dressers and nightstands were also obviously non-Bazhir works of art.

Still, he thought, as his eyes focused on the thick linens on the massive bed and the bright tapestries depicting hunting scenes lining the stone walls, he preferred Yamani decorations to Tortallan ones. Tortallan interior design was so ostentatious. The problem, he decided, wasn't with the bright colors, since Bazhir rugs and blankets were famous for the vibrant threads woven through them. No, it was all the chaos of the scenes on their tapestries and linens. In his opinion, if one was going to employ vivid colors, one should accompany the bright hues with simple geometric designs to avoid over-stimulating the eyes.

His inner critique of Princess Shinkokami's new quarters was interrupted when Princess Vania exclaimed, "Oh, Lady Cythera, you did a wonderful job! The rugs and tapestries are gorgeous. As for the porcelain cats, they are absolutely adorable. I'm so glad that you took my brother's advice about using them as decorations."

"What a charming fusion of Yamani and Tortallan interior design," added King Jonathan, looking delighted as he examined Princess Shinkokami's rooms.

"Everything is perfect," Queen Thayet put in, beaming at her social secretary. "Once again, you have served me well."

"I'm honored." Curtsying, Lady Cythera stated, "Of course, I would have finished decorating Princess Shinkokami's chambers earlier if it hadn't been for the dispute with Tyra, which made it difficult for the merchants to procure the cloths needed for the tapestries and linens. Thanks to the madness in Tyra, I barely completed decorating her rooms in time. I mean, she did arrive in Port Caynn yesterday, even if she isn't scheduled to arrive here for two more days. Then again, all is well that ends well, and the rooms will be prepared in time for the imperial princess, which is all that really matters."

"Well, some claim that life is nothing more than a series of crises and barely-averted catastrophes," observed King Jonathan dryly. "Since we've managed to dodge this disaster, I would like to move onto my next trouble. If you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with my champion, whose temper doesn't improve when she is kept waiting, that I must attend now. Zahir, kindly come with me and see to the refreshments."

Scowling because he had been planning on skulking back to his bed as soon as the tour of Princess Shinkokami's quarters concluded, Zahir groaned as he followed his knightmaster back into the hallways of the palace, "Must I, sire?"

"You're my squire," the king pointed out, arching an eyebrow. "Last time I checked, that was part of your job description."

Zahir considered complaining under his breath that he was not paid enough to serve snappish female knights, but decided not to antagonize his knightmaster and kept this snarky remark to himself.

Five minutes later, as he poured drinks for King Jonathan and Sir Alanna in the king's study, he thought that the king's champion was aggravating his knightmaster enough for all the liberals and conservatives in the realm.

"I don't see why I can't pick Keladry of Mindelan as my squire." Alanna glowered as Zahir placed a goblet of wine in front of her. Watching her bring the glass to her lips, Zahir thought that the Girl and the Lioness would make an oddly mismatched pairing. While they were both females pursuing what he regarded as an unacceptable career, the fact remained that Mindelan wasn't a person who forever seemed on the cusp of an explosion, and she, unlike the Lioness, had never, to Zahir's knowledge, cheated with magic.

"You don't, do you?" King Jonathan demanded crisply, sipping from his chalice. "In that case, I shall explain it to you for the umpteenth time. You can't take Keladry of Mindelan as your squire, because it won't do her any favors. She encountered enough obstacles as a page—"

"Some of them set up by you," snorted Alanna into her goblet. "I'll never forget that it was you who allowed Cavall to put her on probation, Jon."

"It was either that or lose him as training master," the king blustered as Zahir refilled his glass. "I have to think in the big picture, Alanna, if I want to achieve anything as a ruler. Not only does Cavall do a fine job training future knights for the realm, but he also happens to be the man who conservatives regard as their voice at court. If he had resigned, many of the reforms that Thayet and I would like to accomplish during our reign would stand no chance of getting completed."

"Keladry of Mindelan was your sacrificial lamb." Alanna's mouth twisted as though she were drinking vinegar instead of wine. "You had no problem denying her justice as long as it was political to do so. It was all for the general good, and what does it matter if one ten-year-old girl isn't treated according to the law of the land?"

"I'm not going to apologize, Alanna, for putting the needs of an entire kingdom before the dreams of one girl." King Jonathan's eyes flashed like the hottest part of a flame. "Rulers have to compromise, and that's all I did when I permitted Cavall to place her on probation."

"Compromise?" boomed Alanna. "Is that what you call abandoning your principles now?"

"I have always supported lady knights, as you should be well aware," King Jonathan snarled, his hands clenching his goblet so tightly that his knuckles resembled slabs of alabaster.

"You haven't demonstrated that lately," scoffed Alanna, amethyst eyes ablaze.

"I'm showing my support right now," the king hissed. "After all, I'm the one explaining to you that if you take Keladry as your squire, all the many people in this country who don't approve of lady knights will believe that you witched her into succeeding. It would be infinitely better for her and for all future lady knights if you let someone else choose her as squire."

"Humph," huffed Alanna, whose cheeks were as red as her hair. "I suppose I _am_ allowed to ask Raoul to take her on once he has dealt with all those giants who snuck across the border from Tusaine?"

"I suppose you are," King Jonathan affirmed in a wintry voice. "As a matter of fact, I think Lord Raoul and Keladry of Mindelan would be well-matched. It seems they developed something of a rapport when the pages helped the Own kill a spidren infestation her first year, and she showed some talent as a commander when she led a group of pages in a skirmish against some bandits during her second-year. Keladry of Mindelan has demonstrated herself to be a different sort of knight than you are, and I wouldn't mind her being given an opportunity to hone her particular skills."

"Well, Jon, if you think it's a good idea, perhaps I should reconsider my plan." Resentment shimmered in Alanna's gaze as Zahir, feeling numb from hearing his knightmaster praise the Girl, nearly dropped the pitcher of wine he was holding.

"If I didn't care so much about my country, I would suggest that you take over my responsibilities for a year, Alanna," the king shot back. "Then you could see how hard it is to keep liberals and conservatives from murdering each other. You might also learn just how impossible it is to please both sides without compromising, and, yet, how compromising never fails to bring you under fire from both ends of the political spectrum. Also, if you managed to leave the realm in a better condition than it was in when you were given responsibility for it, you could earn bonus points."

"At least I'd still stand for something besides compromise," fumed Alanna, nearly spitting with fury.

"I stand for social and legal reform." King Jonathan's features had undeniably slipped into what, on a less exalted personage, would undoubtedly have been termed a scowl. "I stand for preventing the northerners and Bazhir from slaughtering each other. I stand for being the strong leader keeping this realm from falling into chaos."

"I'm sorry I forgot the ideals behind Your Majesty's politics," sneered Alanna, and Zahir concluded inwardly that the king would be wise to pick another champion, one that didn't tear him to shreds at every opportunity and actually defended him as a champion was intended to do.

"And I'm sorry that you aren't the only person in the country, Alanna." King Jonathan's eyes were as hard and as cold as ice. "Otherwise, I assure you, your personal happiness would be my only priority."

"I seem to have infringed upon Your Majesty's personal happiness enough for one day," established Alanna curtly, pushing herself out of her chair, jerking her head in an irritable bow at the king, and marching out of his office.

As soon as the study door slammed behind her, King Jonathan rubbed his temples as if he suddenly was afflicted with a dreadful migraine. Cocking his head as he scrutinized his knightmaster, Zahir determined that being a king was probably much more challenging than most people believed, and that, right now, his knightmaster needed someone to defend him from the abuse of his own champion.

Bursting out of the office, Zahir chased after Alanna and caught up with her as she was about to step out of the parlor of the royal quarters.

"Don't you dare talk to the king that way," growled Zahir, striding up to her with his hand on the scabbard of his sword. "You can disagree with his policies all you want—Mithros knows that I do—but show a little respect for him. Don't act as if he doesn't stand for this whole country, because all he does is sacrifice for it."

He expected the Lioness, notorious for her temper, to rip him to slivers with her sword before he had even removed his from his sheath, but, instead, her lips quirking in a manner that might have indicated amusement, she asked as she pivoted to face him, "Do you really believe it is wise to cross blades with the king's champion, boy?"

"Somebody has to defend the king's honor." Defiantly, Zahir lifted his chin. "If you won't do your duty to him, then I guess I'll have to do mine all the more."

"Since you are so devoted to the Crown, I can't strike you down for insulting _my_ honor," Alanna informed him dryly. "As such, the only course of action available to me seems to be explaining myself to you."

"Go on." Zahir's eyes narrowed, as he thought that speaking with the realm's only female knight was different than he had imagined it would be. Before, he had always supposed that if they did meet, he would want nothing more than to strangle her. Now, though, he found himself oddly drawn in by her humor and her stubbornness. Perhaps, to offset her many bad sides, the Lioness also had a few less ugly ones. "I'm listening."

"The king and I have been friends since we were pages," Alanna said simply. "He needs me to keep his ego in check by questioning his royal authority every once in a blue moon. If I don't tell him that he is wrong, there are very few people who will dare to be so bold with him, and then his head might take up permanent residence in his backside. However, you can rest assured, lad, that while I am quite happy to confront the king when I believe him to be wrong, I would die protecting him even if we were engaged in one of our stormiest arguments at the time. I serve the king, and one of my greatest services to him is my bluntness."

"Very well." Grudgingly, Zahir relinquished his grip on his sword hilt. "I guess you have a valid excuse for your behavior, after all."

"Wonderful," Alanna commented wryly. "Now that everybody's honor is satisfied, you can return to serving your knightmaster, and I can attend to my duties elsewhere."

Before Zahir could reply, she strode out of the room, leaving him standing there, gawking at the door she had just shut behind her. Still stunned that he had managed to survive shouting at the infamous Lioness, he returned to the king's office.

"Let's go for a ride, Squire," announced King Jonathan abruptly as Zahir appeared in the doorway.

"What, sire?"asked Zahir, positive that he had misheard his knightmaster.

"Let's go riding, Zahir," the king reiterated dryly. "I trust you have heard of riding."

"Only since I was in my mother's womb, and I've been riding for about that long, too, Your Majesty," Zahir smirked.

"Perfect." His knightmaster rose. "We'll waste no more time talking then, and we'll just do for a change."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Zahir answered. Then, he hurried to his room, put on his riding boots, and accompanied his knightmaster down to the royal stables.

They were guiding their horses down a cobbled pathway through a garden filled with blossoming roses and bubbling fountains when King Jonathan remarked, "Meetings and more meetings ;conflict, conflict, and always conflict." He waved a hand around at the flowering plants and burbling cascades of water. "A place of great beauty this is, and yet we made it. I grow weary of all this making, Squire. Where is the time for being?"

"Somewhere that isn't Corus," responded Zahir frankly.

"You speak truer than you know, Zahir ibn Alhaz." The king nodded forcefully. "Sometimes I think we should move the capital away from Corus. Only in a place as political as Corus could life have become so clouded."

Zahir's mouth dropped open, and he blinked, because his knightmaster seemed entirely earnest. "Where would you move the capital, Your Majesty."

"Somewhere wet. Somewhere wild. Somewhere that doesn't have as much making. Somewhere without all the conflict." King Jonathan straightened in his saddle and took in a deep breath as if he were about to make a proclamation. "Good! It is decided, then. We will move the capital at once. You shall be in charge of the relocation committee. Find a new capital city for our realm, and report to me tomorrow, Squire."

"You must be joking, sire!" Zahir's teeth began to grind in anxiety as he contemplated whether the king had finally gone mad from the pressure of governing a country. "We can't possibly do such a thing now—"

Abruptly, he stopped, and the eyes that had been so wide contracted in suspicion. "You're teasing me, Your Majesty."

When King Jonathan snickered, Zahir took his revenge by stating, "I was surprised that Sir Alanna and I didn't end up killing each other today. It turns out that she has some sides of her that don't make me want to murder her."

"As you mature, you'll see that everybody has different sides." His penetrating eyes resting on Zahir, the king went on, "For instance, one side of you is the prickly, proud Bazhir that gives a haughty inflection to so many of your words, gestures, and thoughts if your characteristic sneer is any indication. The other side of you is uncertain of your own worth and afraid that you won't fulfill all the expectations that have been dumped upon your shoulders. When that side of you shows, it feels like all your posturing and pride are no more than masks. The last side is compassionate, noble, and brave. That is the side of you has manifested itself when you took beatings for your little sister, protected Myra when she was being raped, fed that poor family when we were returning from the desert, and tried to help the Hibrus in Tyra. All those sides are you, and it is impossible sometimes to decide where one side ends and another starts."

"You shouldn't know all these things about me, sire." Unnerved at hearing himself described so accurately and in such tremendous detail, Zahir shook his head. "It's scary."

Ignoring Zahir's comment, the king continued, "Alanna, like you, is a very complex person. We've always had our disagreements, and I think we'd both like to believe that our friendship hasn't lessened over the years, but sometimes it does seem like we've drifted apart. Sometimes I feel like I've grown closer to Gary since I became king, while she and Raoul became better friends. No doubt it's the consequence of what our responsibilities demand of us. She and Raoul live in the field. Things are black and white to them. They don't have to deal with shades of gray. On the battlefield, they always have a clear-cut enemy to destroy, but, at the palace, political foes cannot be so easily defeated, and are not so readily spotted. It is easy not to compromise when all you have to do is make war, instead of keep a kingdom intact and make it function properly. Of course, fighting knights are vital to the survival of the country…"

"Different knights all do their part to make the realm survive." Shrewdly, Zahir glanced at his knightmaster. "There are commanders and desk knights. You hinted earlier that Mindelan might make a decent commander. I hope you don't have plans for me to become a desk knight, since then you will also need to have an outline of how you are going to deal with me once I am driven out of my mind by boredom."

"I don't intend to waste your fighting skills by turning you into a desk knight." King Jonathan chuckled. "I see you being a very active knight. As you will be the Voice after me, though, I feel that you could benefit from seeing how to lead a large group of people. Today, for example, you should have learned that while a leader must know how to compromise, he must also be capable of remaining firm. After all, people without a government of some sort that is actually willing to wield authority over them are barbarians."

"Speaking of barbarians, have the two rogues who kidnapped Mindelan's maid offered any useful information yet?" Zahir wanted to know. The words came out of him in a rush, because if he didn't force the question out quickly, he realized that he would lose the nerve to pose it at all. Too much of him was so terrified of seeking out knowledge when the truth was likely to be so revolting. He would rather let the darkness of ignorance blind him from the ugly things he couldn't bear to see.

"Yes." His knightmaster nodded grimly. "I'm not sure you'll want to hear the information procured from them."

"I don't want to know, but I can't bear not knowing either, Your Majesty," said Zahir, his tone hoarse. "Did they say Joren was the one who paid them to capture Mindelan's maid?"

"I'm afraid so, Zahir." Once again, the king offered a somber nod.

"Is he being held?" inquired Zahir, wondering if he would have the guts to visit a friend in jail who actually deserved to be imprisoned after he had watched someone who didn't deserve to die come to terms with an imminent execution.

"No," King Jonathan educated him crisply. "There isn't enough evidence to hold him as of yet, and I'm not such a tyrant that I will break the law in order to see my definition of justice done."

"Yes, sire." Zahir swallowed the little saliva remaining in his mouth. "I guess I should talk to him, in that case."

However, he already felt as if he were about to vomit just thinking about visiting someone who had no qualm about ordering the kidnapping of an innocent woman or cheating to obtain what could only be a hollow victory.

When he knocked on Joren's door an hour later, he was feeling no less noxious. Indeed, as the blonde teenager who had been his best friend throughout page training opened the door to admit him, he found that it required all of his willpower not to barf all over Joren's pale skin. Someone who had behaved with such dishonor deserved to be contaminated, he thought bitterly.

"Tell me, Joren, do you feel at all sorry that Mindelan's maid was kidnapped?" demanded Zahir as soon as Joren had shut the door.

"Why should I?" Joren arched an eyebrow, his blank face showing just how indifferent he was to the suffering of an innocent servant. "A mere servant girl is nothing to me, and anything that could have prevented Mindelan from becoming a squire was good in my opinion. The ends justify the means."

"No, they don't," Zahir snapped. "If you act dishonorably, then any success is a tainted victory. Something cannot be good if evil is involved in achieving it. Tradition protects innocent serving girls, ant that's the point. Custom exists to defend people's rights. You can't just go disregarding tradition because it doesn't suit your convenience."

"Why not?" Joren fired back. "The progressives do that every minute of every day."

"You aren't a progressive," snarled Zahir. "That's the whole point. You were supposed to stand for something, and now you are just somebody who thinks kidnapping is acceptable as long as it serves your idea of the greater good."

"Winning is all that matters, Zahir." Joren's face was crimson and so twisted that it did not look remotely handsome any more. Somehow, Zahir had the nauseating impression that he was seeing his best friend without the respectful, polished veneer. Finally, after years of knowing the other boy, he appeared to be meeting a monster that lurked beneath Joren's attractive features.

"Winning is worthless if honor is sacrificed," argued Zahir. "Can't you understand that, Joren?"

"I understand that honor means nothing without victory." Joren snorted. "I'm surprised you are too thick to see that. Of course, Father always said that your race was the most honorable bunch of losers in the history of civilization."

"Well, my father always claimed that your race was the most dishonorable winners in the history of the world," retorted Zahir. "I suppose I can take pride in my honor, and you could have taken pride in winning if only your foul plot had succeeded."

Then, before Joren could say anything else that could make him wonder whether he had ever really known his best friend from the pages' wing at all, Zahir bustled out of the room, his nose aloft, so that Joren could comprehend that he was as proud in victory as he was in defeat. Everything he did was all for honor, and he had no cause to be ashamed whether he succeeded or failed.


	48. Chapter 48

Author's Note: For anyone interested, the Tamora Pierce Ficship competitions are up. Be sure to nominate all your favorite finished Tamora Pierce stories (especially if they are mine, because I will, of course, love you forever for doing that). That's all. On with the chapter.

Old Friends

The next morning, Zahir was awoken by sounds of shouting in the royal quarters. In his years at the palace, he had learned to block out a certain level of constant background noise, because, regardless of what time of day or night it happened to be, there always seemed to be people talking or bustling around on official or unofficial business. Even servants in the Royal Palace, as far as he was concerned, were convinced of their own self-importance, and that meant that little could be achieved quietly in the castle. In fact, any deeds accomplished without any attempts to draw attention to the work were automatically regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, since, surely, as the occupants of the palace reasoned, nobody would wish to hide anything that was moral…

Still, the raised voices penetrating Zahir's closed bedroom door were too loud even by Royal Palace standards. Grumbling about the lost sleep that he could never regain, he yanked his blanket up over his head and wrapped his pillow about his ears, hoping to drown out the yelling. When that endeavor failed, he sighed and opened his eyes.

Blearily, he rolled out of bed. Deciding that his dignity would not permit him to investigate the source of the disruption of his valuable sleeping time until he was properly groomed, he scrubbed his face, cleaned his teeth, brushed his hair, and dressed.

Once he emerged from his bedchamber, Zahir traced the sound of elevated voices to his knightmaster's study. Before he could determine whether it would be more prudent to listen through the door or devise some pretext by which to gain admittance into the office, the conversation inside drew to a close. He had just enough time to pull away from the door, sliding into a casual posture that implied he had merely been strolling past it, when it swung open.

Shooting a covert glance at the magistrates and advocates leaving the king's study, Zahir found that his curiosity was only further piqued.

"Sire, what was that meeting about?" he asked, leaning against the office's doorframe, once the footsteps of the last advocate had faded from hearing.

Zahir anticipated that he would receive a reply emphasizing just how much this was none of his concern, but, instead, King Jonathan observed dryly, "I suppose you'll know by this time tomorrow no matter what I say. If I don't tell you myself, I don't doubt that you'll listen to gossip about it."

"I don't gossip, Your Majesty." Loftily, Zahir sniffed. Examining his fingernails, he added, "Of course, if you don't tell me, I might feel compelled to seek other sources of information, none of whom could possibly be as accurate as you."

"Charming as ever, Squire." Unsmiling, his knightmaster updated him, every syllable reverberating like a sharp rap on a tuneless bell, "This morning, the men questioning the criminals who were hired to abduct Mindelan's maid uncovered a letter to the criminals from Joren of Stone Mountain. The letter dealt with how the criminals would be paid for kidnapping Mindelan's maidservant. As such, it provided enough evidence to bring him to trial. He, however, has disappeared from palace grounds. Although soldiers have been dispatched to search the roads for him, odds are that he won't be found before he arrives at his lands."

"I don't see how that's possible." Zahir's tongue felt as if it had been replaced by a rock, making it difficult for him to breathe and speak. "I talked to him just last evening."

"He probably left last night," responded the king, his expression grim. "Something must have tipped him off that the evidence against him was growing stronger."

"Maybe it was me," muttered Zahir, ducking his head as his cheeks flamed. "I made some pretty pointed statements to him last evening. Sorry about that, sire, but I didn't picture him as being such a coward as to flee from justice."

"Apparently, Joren of Stone Mountains is someone to underestimate at one's own peril." King Jonathan sighed. "Clearly, he is clever enough to understand that a noble, unless accused of treason, is inviolate on his own lands, and there is no evidence to suggest that Joren of Stone Mountain is plotting against the Crown."

"You're the king," Zahir pointed out, shaking his head. It was at moments like these when he was positive that he would never comprehend northerners and all their illogical legal codes. "Surely, you have authority over your subjects anywhere in your realm."

"Nobles, yourself included, have ancient privileges, as do groups such as the clergy and merchants," answered his knightmaster. "I cannot revoke those ancient customs, because it is those traditions that balance out the power of the Crown and keep the governing of the country at least somewhat balanced."

"Maybe the realm will be so balanced that nothing can be done, Your Majesty," commented a scowling Zahir. "Everyone should be able to be able to be punished for breaking the law, or else laws are useless."

"I can't break the law to prove that doing so is wrong, and I can't kidnap Joren of Stone Mountain to demonstrate how much of a crime abducting people is," the king explained tersely. "I would be doing both those things if I attempted to have him arrested in his own fief."

"Doing those things might be justice, sire." As he established as much, Zahir's jaw clenched, and his arms folded over his chest.

"Law and justice are often not synonymous," King Jonathan educated him softly. "The law may punish people too severely or not harshly enough. Sometimes it won't take mitigating circumstances into account when a sentence is passed, and, all too often, it is used to protect the upper classes while injuring the lower ones. Only a fool would label that as justice, Zahir. When it comes down to it, the law is intended to maintain our society, preventing us from falling head over heels into the mayhem of vigilantism or rule by brute force. The law is far from perfect, but it is preferable to anarchy. A monarch must support the rule of law by making it plain that he is as subject to it as everyone else. Of course, a monarch, like any other citizen, may pursue legal venues for implementing changes in, or abolishing entirely, unjust laws, but reform must always be done in a legal fashion or else it will result in anarchy, which benefits nobody in the end."

"How will you, without stepping outside the boundaries of the law, get Joren to face the court, then, Your Majesty?" demanded Zahir, pursing his lips.

"His knightmaster, Sir Paxton of Nond, has indicated that he is willing to take an active role in persuading Joren of Stone Mountain to face the court," the king replied. "I can only hope that he will heed his knightmaster, just as I can only hope that, when a sentence is passed upon him, it will discourage him from breaking any more of the realm's laws."

"Is that what you hope?" Zahir arched an eyebrow, a bitter taste welling in his mouth. "Sire, you just want him to be punished enough that he will be too scared to violate the laws, is that it? You don't wish for him to understand just how twisted his actions were. As far as you are concerned, it's perfectly fine if he doesn't comprehend how wrong he was, so long as he doesn't break any more of your precious laws, is that right?"

"Squire, obviously, I would hope that he would reach an understanding of why his actions were immoral." King Jonathan's lips thinned. "However, I have found, as a ruler, that some individuals are incapable of seeing that their criminal behavior is wrong. With such beings, only a fear of punishment can keep them from trampling over the rights of others."

"You make it sound like Joren was born evil," Zahir spat, thinking that his knightmaster didn't know Joren at all. "He wasn't."

Before the king could argue, he tugged up the sleeve on his left arm, marched up to the desk, and thrust his forearm beneath his knightmaster's nose. "Do you see that scar?" he asked breathlessly, jabbing at a pincer-shaped piece of pale flesh on his otherwise swarthy body. "Your Majesty, do you know how I got that scar?"

"No, I don't." Clearly taken aback, King Jonathan shook his head.

"I got it when we were fighting a den of spidens at the end of the first year Mindelan had joined us, sire," growled Zahir. "My graceful footwork failed me, and I toppled into a mud puddle. A spidren grasped my arm right there, and I thought I was going to be eaten alive. Then, before I even knew what was happening, Joren stepped into save me. Everyone else was so busy helping Mindelan, who had just rescued Tasride, that they didn't even notice what Joren had done. Joren could have just abandoned me, because he wasn't about to get rewarded for a feat that nobody saw, or, afterward, he could have bragged about rescuing me, but he didn't. He understood that it would be completely humiliating for me if the whole pages' wing realized what a gaffe I made in the middle of that battle. Everybody in the pages' wing did everything in their power to increase their own status and decrease the standing of others, but Joren chose to save me and not take any credit for that. Whatever you may believe on the contrary, sire, Joren isn't a monster. He just insists on doing what he thinks is the right thing, and he doesn't care about the consequences for doing what he believes is correct."

"Zahir." Gently, his knightmaster patted his scarred forearm. "I recognize that this is personal for you, but you must understand that if someone realizes that his actions are illegal, that should be a hint to him that his behavior is wrong. Besides, you must appreciate that one can hardly claim to maintain the moral high ground when abducting innocent maids. That is the very definition of dishonorable."

"I'm not saying that I agree with Joren's actions." His temper flaring, Zahir wrenched his arm out of the king's clasp. "All I'm saying is that Joren thinks that he is right, and that, in his opinion, the ends justifies the means. You cannot disagree with such a philosophy, Your Majesty, when I heard you espousing it in your debate with Sir Alanna yesterday. You don't have any qualms about sacrificing your honor for the general good, so how can you hold Joren to a greater moral standard than you do yourself? Isn't that most unfair of you?"

"I am the king." King Jonathan's tone was as hard and as cold as ice. "Not only do I have the experience necessary to determine whether something is truly for the general good, but I also have the legal power to do so. Joren has neither the experience nor the authority to make decisions about what is required to uphold the general good of the country. Unlike Joren, I haven't presumed to fill a role that wasn't granted to me."

"Joren thinks that he was granted a right to figure out what is necessary for the general good, too, sire," retorted Zahir. "He reckons that his position as heir to an old noble family gives him the right to decide what needs to be done for the general good of this country. His father was the one who hammered such a belief into his head when he was just a little boy, and it was friends like Garvey and Vinson who agreed with that theory. In his mind, he inherited the right to decide what was best for the country as much as you did."

"Then he is deluded," snapped the king.

"He's what people made him, Your Majesty," Zahir burst out mutinously, raising his chin. "From his father, who taught him to ride like a sack of potatoes as so many northerners do, he learned that people of his birth should never fall and never fail, when any decent rider—in other words, just about any Bazhir- knows that when you start riding, you are going to fall, and the important thing is to just to remount. Lord Wyldon taught him and everybody else in the pages' wing to be aggressive and to concentrate on the goal. His peers showed him that you have to be tough in order to survive, and that many times even your friends would plot against you if you revealed too much weakness. He heard half the country grumbling about Mindelan and decided he would do everything in his power to get rid of her. From the way Lord Wyldon always referred to her as 'probationer' during her first year and everything, he figured out that by sabotaging her, he was making Lord Wyldon happy. His method was brutal, but that was only because all he was ever taught to be was a weapon. What he did was wrong, but he thought it was right. He might have sacrificed his honor, but that was only because he thought it was serving the general good to do so. You shouldn't hate him. You should loathe the society that created him."

"Joren was old enough to think for himself and to make his own choices. Nobody else can be held accountable for his misguided beliefs or behavior," his knightmaster countered crisply. "Anyway, if I recall correctly, only moments ago, you were quite adamant that he be dragged before a court."

"I want him to realize that what he did was wrong, not to be written off as someone who was evil from birth." Tears of rage and pain were burning a passage to his eyes, but he blinked them back, because he couldn't afford to appear weak at the present. "I wish for him to be treated with justice, not cruelty. I hope that he will be rehabilitated somehow, not punished. If you ask me, you should desire the same things, sire."

"Frankly, Zahir, I am more worried about the law treating your friend too leniently rather than too harshly," King Jonathan informed him wryly.

"You would be," snarled Zahir, gritting his teeth. "Of course, you would want to dump all the blame on the shoulders of a teenage boy, so that you don't have to acknowledge that your country made him who he is, Your Majesty."

"Squire, listen to me." His cerulean eyes level, the king clutched Zahir's shoulders firmly. "You need to calm down. For now, this conversation is at an end. Go eat breakfast, ride your horse, practice your yard skills, read a book, or do anything else that will help you regain some control over yourself. While I understand that the situation with Joren is upsetting to you, I will not be a target for your frustration."

"Of course, why should I fault you for anything when you are the one mismanaging the whole stupid realm?" scoffed Zahir, stomping out of the study before his knightmaster could order him to apologize for his insubordination.

His brain felt too swollen with a fever even he couldn't name to enjoy even the slightest sense of triumph over this minor victory. Without his mind's consent or awareness, his feet carried him out of the palace and across the grounds to the cemetery behind the chapel where Trevor was buried. The overwhelming need to be close to all that remained of his best friend drove him down the curving cobblestone pathways of the graveyard, winding him past blooming flower beds, ponds full of croaking frogs resting on lily pads, and stone benches as coldly imposing as any tombstone.

When he reached Trevor's grave, he did not have the courage to study in any detail the name or the dates carved into it. Instead, he prostrated himself on the ground before the tomb, his palms and forehead pressed against the sun-warmed grass and dirt. He didn't know to whom he was praying to, or even if he was praying at all. All he knew was that he had to touch the soil where Trevor was interred, because, if Trevor's spirit still existed in any capacity, it would have to feel a special connection to the beautiful, serene land in which his physical body was resting. Now more than ever, he needed to be infused with Trevor's patience and peace. Like Trevor, he had to find a way to mix integrity and justice with mercy and compassion.

He had no idea how long he knelt there before he felt the earth tremble beneath his forehead, telling him that someone was approaching. Dimly, it occurred that he could preserve his dignity by pushing himself away from the ground before the other person could spot him in his humbled posture, but, he dismissed the notion without truly considering it. At the moment, he didn't care about his pride. All he was concerned with at the present was absorbing as much of Trevor's quiet wisdom as possible. Besides, he reasoned, people came to cemeteries to mourn. Anyone passing him would be too caught up in their own grief to notice his anguish.

"Zahir." The sound of his own name spoken in Aisha's voice caused him to start, so that he almost banged his head against Trevor's grave. As he twisted around to face her, she reverently approached the tombstone and gnawed on her lower lip as she read the name etched upon it. "I'm so sorry. I know that he was a special friend of yours after you traveled to the desert together. You should have told me that he had passed away. If I had known, I would never have teased you for sulking after you returned from Tyra."

"I know." Zahir forced the words out through numb lips. "I just could never allow myself to be weak in front of you."

"I don't require your strength so much that I can't bear to comfort you after you have suffered a terrible loss." Aisha knelt on the ground beside her brother and linked her fingers through his. "Of course, the dead we love never truly leave us. They live on inside our souls, providing us with valuable courage and counsel."

"That's what everyone says," muttered Zahir, staring down at the dirt beneath which Trevor's body was rotting and being devoured by worms even as they spoke.

"Well, sometimes, everybody is right." Aisha squeezed his hand and favored him with a quick grin. "That happens slightly more often than you being correct about something, actually."

Ignoring the playful jibe from his sister, Zahir mumbled, "If everyone is right, Aisha, why isn't he speaking to me now?"

"He is." Tenderly, Aisha rested her palm against his chest, so that his heart pounded out a steady beat against her hand. "He is talking to you in your heart. You just aren't listening properly. Just be still and know that he is with you."

Surprisingly, Zahir felt a non-verbal but potent promise surging through his veins, swearing that it would lift him from all his fears, it would be hope for him when he was despairing, it would be his light when everything seemed darkest, it would heal him when he was in shame, and it would provide him with the peace that nothing else in the world could offer. He didn't know if it was the spirit of Trevor flowing through his soul, but the idea of such a miracle transpiring was so awful and wonderful that he choked out, "Don't tell me that you believe in an afterlife when you've rejected just about everything important in the Bazhir religion."

"I believe that the dead can be remembered, and that the living have the power to make their lives a monument to the dead." Aisha gave his knee a whack that was perched between a slap and a pat. "Without question, I believe that the benefits of you being a virtuous person are felt not only by those whom you help but by an inner calm in yourself in this lifetime, and not necessarily in some divine realm we may never reach. Just because life ends in death that doesn't mean that life itself is worthless or that the state of our souls somehow doesn't matter. Since we will die, we just need to focus on living and dying according to our principles, so that our lives and our deaths mean something. We have to shine brightly and not worry about being put out."

"I guess I already knew that." Zahir felt like his heart was being ripped to smithereens as he tore at his hair. "Maybe I just needed you to remind me of it."

"I know you already knew it." Gently, Aisha removed his hands from his hair. "Your name means 'shining, bright,' and you've always shone so strongly that you put all the other stars in the sky to shame. Somehow, even if you wish that you didn't burn so brightly, I don't see that changing any time soon."

"Thanks, Aisha." Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Zahir smiled at her through the tears obscuring his vision. "How did you know that I needed you, anyway?"

"You're my brother, so I can always sense when your pride won't permit you to admit that you need me." Returning his smile, Aisha elbowed him in the ribs. Then, sobering, she murmured, "Some claim that hell is other people, but I don't think that's true. I think hell is drowning in your own despair, choking on your own fury, wallowing in your own guilt, and crying out in your own pain, convinced that nobody can save you from yourself. Hell is remembering every little act of spite you ever committed, all the things you should have stopped but failed to, and everything that you should have accomplished but didn't. Hell is the fear that, after all the terrible things you've done, nothing will ever be right again. In short, hell is being alone forever, and its torture is all self-inflicted. It was that overpowering fear of terror of being alone in the dark that me cry when we were little until you crawled over to my sleeping mat. When I felt the heat of your body pressed against mine, I knew I wasn't alone, and I could fall asleep."

"It is perfectly sensible to fear the dark." As he reflected on his own weaknesses and cowardice, Zahir sneered. "It's quite another to be scared of the light. That's what I'm guilty of, isn't it? I'm terrified of the light inside me, aren't I?"

"Exactly." Aisha's dark eyes fixed on his. "Love the you that you hide, Zahir, because I do. Don't be afraid to shine for all to see. Everybody should be able to know your goodness like I do."

"If you say so." Flushing since he could only tolerate so much affection from his little sister without experiencing extreme embarrassment, Zahir pushed himself to his feet. "Well, I suppose that I owe somebody an apology, and my reformed self shouldn't neglect to make apologies. I'll see you around, Aisha."

Before she could answer, he sprinted away from her down the winding cobblestones paths out of the cemetery. Even though she did not attempt to chase him, he continued to run across the palace grounds. He only slowed his pace when he entered the castle itself.

When he felt like he had placed a decent distance between himself and the sister who wasn't pursuing him, anyway, he realized that humbling himself before the king wasn't something he really wanted to rush to, and so he shuffled dully through the corridors back to the royal quarters. Once there, he bullied his legs into transporting him back to his knightmaster's study. Then, taking a fortifying breath, he knocked on the office door.

"Come in." King Jonathan's voice called through the door, and Zahir's last opportunity to flee vanished.

Not allowing himself a second to consider what he was plunging into, Zahir turned the knob and stepped into the king's study.

"Yes, Squire?" Arching an eyebrow, his knightmaster glanced up from a mountain of parchment probably containing petitions from some of the whinier inhabitants of the country. "Are you feeling a bit more composed now?"

"A bit." His cheeks ablaze, Zahir shrugged. "I wanted to apologize, sire. Some of the things I said to you were completely out of line. It's just that I didn't know what to think or do about Joren—and I still don't as a matter of fact—so I felt as if I had to shout at you in order to cover my own confusion."

"Zahir, you are a teenager." The king squeezed his squire's shoulders. "At your age, you aren't supposed to have figured out exactly who you are, what you think about everything, and what you wish to do about the state of the world around you. Even many adults haven't decided who they are, what they think about everything, and what exactly they are going to do about the shape the realm around them is in. Besides, since you are such a dynamic individual, it is only natural that all the sides of you cause you to experience some bafflement about who you are and what you believe."

"If I'm not fully formed, neither is Joren," Zahir persisted, shooting an almost pleading look at his knightmaster. "He can change, just like I can."

"Oh, yes, he can change." King Jonathan's lips tightened bleakly. "Since he has started page training, he has consistently decided to make choices that have set him down a dark path of dishonorable, criminal behavior. Unlike you, he has not shown signs of developing into a good, virtuous man whom anyone would be proud to call a friend."

"One choice is enough to set a life back on a virtuous path," insisted Zahir, a desperate note that he despised ringing in his tone. "One right decision could be enough to save him."

"Perhaps." His knightmaster sighed. "Unfortunately, once people begin to travel down a dark path, it grows ever simpler for people to continue down it and ever harder for them to turn away from it. When we allow evil to encircle our hearts, it only becomes increasingly difficult to break free of its chain. Our souls can all too easily be lost to darkness when we are driven by dishonorable, selfish motivations, rather than noble, selfless ones."

"There is hope for him." Wildly, Zahir shook his head. "He didn't give up on me, so I can't give up on him. He didn't allow me to be gobbled up by the spidren, and so I can't permit him to be consumed by the darkness in his own heart."

"I hope you succeed in rescuing your friend." The king's blue eyes lanced into him. "Now, to give you fair warning, Squire, if you ever accuse me of being unfair again, as you have made a habit of doing lately, I will have you copying out portions of the Bazhir legal code. That might help you appreciate just how many laws I have whirling around inside my head on a regular basis."

"I suppose your word in this is the law, Your Majesty." To his shock, Zahir felt his lips twitching into a faint grin.

"It's justice, too." King Jonathan's lips quirked. "The law and justice are not always mutually exclusive, you know. I think you could profit from a demonstration of that fact."

"I wouldn't mind if you made an example of someone else," smirked Zahir. Then, before he could stop himself, he demanded, "How can we be shouting at each other one minute and exchanging jokes the next, sire?"

"Well, I suppose it is because we have a dynamic relationship, Zahir ibn Alhaz." His knightmaster's eyes sparkled at him. "What do you think?"

"I think, Your Majesty, that 'dynamic' is your word for 'explosive and unbalanced,'" snorted Zahir, rolling his eyes.


	49. Chapter 49

Author's Note: I'm anxious to receive feedback from everyone, since I'm not sure how this chapter and the previous one turned out. Please provide me with feedback, because that is the only way that I can know what readers enjoy. I always try to write with my audience in mind. Reviews help me do that, so, really, it is in your own best interests to review. If you don't like something that I'm doing, please speak up, because I'd rather know what is bugging you than have to guess by your silence. Likewise, if you like something, don't hesitate to mention it, so I can try to incorporate more of the things you enjoy into the story. My personal life is very rocky at the moment, and reviews truly do brighten my day. Sorry to nag, but I admit that it does make me a bit pouty when I put a lot of effort into writing long chapters and nobody reviews…

Strangers in a Strange Land

"Welcome to Tortall." King Jonathan offered Princess Shinkokami and Prince Eitaro, the head of the Yamani delegation, his warmest, most dazzling grin once he, his wife, the princess, and the prince had all seated themselves at the high table in the banquet hall, which was packed with brightly attired nobles who were all staring with varying degrees of subtlety up at the princess, plainly judging what sort of queen she would make by watching how she conducted herself at her own welcoming feast.

Personally, as he held out a bowl of water and a towel to his knightmaster, Zahir thought that the princess probably didn't feel too welcome in a place where everyone was gazing fixedly at her, weighing her every action. Of course, he reminded himself mentally with more than a trace of chagrin, he was every bit as guilty as the nobles currently gawking up at Princess Shinkokami. After all, when she had arrived at the palace earlier in the day, he had gaped at her, intrigued by her vibrant, draping kimono, the black slits of her eyes which were narrower than any he had ever seen, and her porcelain skin, which was darker than a northerner's and considerably lighter than a Bazhir's.

As he had watched the princess and her ladies alight from their carriages, he had finally started to understand why many northerners stared at him and other Bazhir as if they were some exotic type of fruit. Likewise, perhaps because he knew what it was like to be looked at like some marvelous animal trapped in a menagerie, he was able to sympathize with the beautiful foreign princess and her ladies.

He returned to the present moment as King Jonathan finished rinsing and drying his hands. Once the king was done washing his hands, Zahir extended the basin and cloth toward the queen, who smoothly dipped her fingers into the water and then dried them on the towel.

After holding the water bowl and cloth out to Prince Eitaro, whose face was as hard as a boulder, Zahir offered the basin and towel to the princess. Her face a polite mask, Princess Shinkokami cleaned her hands, which didn't betray by so much as a tremble the nervousness Zahir knew she must be feeling. Even though she appeared as cool as an oasis, he gave her a quick, encouraging smile. In return, as he left to collect the first course from the kitchens, he thought he saw her rosebud lips quirk up at him.

As he set the first course, an aromatic onion soup, before King Jonathan, Queen Thayet remarked, "Princess Shinkokami, I hope that your journey from Port Caynn wasn't too onerous."

"Oh, no, it was lovely, Your Majesty," replied the princess in a soft voice as Zahir placed a bowl of soup before the queen. "I was able to see more of the beautiful country that I am already starting to think of as my true home."

"Princess Shinkokami is eager to see even more of this lovely realm during the upcoming progress," added Prince Eitaro, as Zahir set a bowl of soup upon the table before him. "She wants nothing more than to do her duty to her new country, just as she once delighted in fulfilling her duties to the Yamani Islands."

"I have already asked my ladies to speak to me only in Common, because a princess must be perfectly fluent in the language of her people," Princess Shinkokami put in, her tone quiet but clear, as Zahir placed her soup in front of her and then drifted off toward the kitchens again.

As the evening continued, and Zahir brought out course after course of roasted meat, he overhead more snippets of conversation at the high table. When he carried out the second course and gathered up the dishes from the first one, he heard them talking about the geography of the fiefs the impending progress would pass through. They were discussing how much the princess loved her new quarters when he picked up the second course and put down the third. Then, as he placed the marzipan and fruit on the table and gathered up the plates from the previous course, Princess Shinkokami observed, "I am looking forward to meeting my fiancé."

"He is eager to meet you, too," Queen Thayet answered between bites of marzipan. "Unfortunately, he will not be returning to the palace until winter. His duties to his knightmaster keep him busy well away from Corus, I'm afraid."

"Naturally, I would never wish to come between my fiancé and his duties to the realm." Princess Shinkokami smiled politely, as though convinced that as long as she looked pleasant she could not make a dreadful political misstep.

"Of course," the king said, as Zahir headed off to the kitchens for the last time that night.

When the banquet finally concluded, Zahir slipped out of the hot kitchens, down the crowded corridors, and out into the now practically balmy palace gardens. He winded his way down cobblestone paths, which were deserted since most of the nobles were only now leaving the feast, until he reached a stone bench where Cait was waiting for him. Her eyes sparkled like stars in the moonlight, and her hair glimmered a reflection in a nearby fountain.

Settling beside her, thinking that his sore feet would probably never be willing to stand again now that he was sitting down, he commented, "Well, the banquet is over at last."

"I surmised that much for myself, thanks." Cait's giggle merged almost perfectly with the bubbling fountain in front of them. "Now, tell me something I don't know already. What was the princess like?"

"She was quiet and sweet," responded Zahir. "Her manners were perfect, her movements graceful, and her whole bearing generally poised. As far as I could see, she did nothing that would make anyone question her ability to be queen when Prince Roald inherits the throne. She was also quite beautiful, which normally helps northerners like a person."

"When you speak about her in such a glowing fashion, I can't help but wonder if you have developed a crush upon her." Cait nudged him in the ribs. "Be careful, Zahir. The worst portion of the afterlife has no fury like a scorned woman, you know."

"I grew up with Aisha, so of course I do," snorted Zahir, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, if you are really so insecure that you need me to repeat how I feel about you, I love you, and I always will. Princess Shinkokami is beautiful, but she is engaged to Prince Roald, which makes her completely out-of-bounds for me, and, besides, she is an exotic creature. You, however, are my home. I couldn't really live without you in my life, and, no matter what the king and other Bazhir might prefer on the contrary, I will do everything in my power to keep us together until death separates us. I love you more than my own life, Cait. I love you with so much passion that it sometimes scares me."

"I love you so much that sometimes I believe my love for you is strong enough in itself to conquer death," Cait whispered against his cheek, her soft lips dancing seductively over his skin, so that he longed to do nothing more than trail his fingers along every inch of her body to sate the terrible hunger for her that filled him whenever he saw her or thought about her. "Other times I get so terrified, Zahir."

"You don't have to be frightened of me." His heart breaking into what felt like a million shards, he yearned to seize her up in the most ardent kiss he had ever given her and to stroke her hair with his fingers so that he could admire the way the stars shone in her auburn strands. However, he didn't want to touch her if she was nervous about what he would do to her. His cheeks as crimson as cherries, he thought that he was not a man who abused woman. Yes, he had slapped Myra that one time, and sometimes he had yanked too roughly on Aisha's arms. Still, he had apologized, however grudgingly, to Myra, and he had been the one to rescue her when she was being raped. As for Aisha, he hadn't done anything that might be constituted as too rough with her for months. Besides, he concluded, there was a difference between a young man who might occasionally be too tough on a sister who had no qualms about getting rough with him, as well, and a young man who beat up a girl he was in a relationship with. Cait would never end up with bruise bracelets from him like Nasira had from Nadir. "I'll never hurt you even if I could, Cait. I love you so much that hurting you would wound me, too. You're like a mirror image of me. If I break you, then I'll shatter, as well."

"I'm not afraid of you." Tenderly, Cait caressed his cheek. "I guess I am just scared of what we're doing, or, rather, of what the consequences of our actions will be. The world doesn't approve of us being together, and I can't help but quake when I imagine how our two societies might crush us in revenge for violating some of their most basic tenets." Her rust-colored eyes piercing into Zahir's, she murmured, "Every second that I'm with you feels like a miracle, Zahir ibn Alhaz, but, when every second is a miracle, I can't help but wonder how many of them can be strung together like beads on a necklace?"

"An eternity of them, Cait." Swallowing down the lump that formed in his throat at her words, Zahir spoke firmly.

"Every second that I'm with you feels like an eternity." As she squeezed Zahir's fingers in her own, Cait chuckled. "I suppose that makes you right, then."

"That means that we already have lived for several eternities." Gently, Zahir kissed her. "How many people are fortunate enough to be able to say the same thing?"

Cait opened her mouth to reply but was chopped off by rustling and panting noises emerging from the bushes behind them. His forehead knotting, Zahir peeked through the shrubs and saw Myra lying in the dirt, with her blouse unbuttoned, her breastband removed, and her skirt raised around her waist, so that Zahir could see that her underpants had been discarded as well. A naked man Zahir recognized vaguely as a member of the Royal Guard was nibbling on her ear and kneading her breasts with his palms.

Disgustedly, Zahir thought that they must be drunk not to have noticed him watching them. Scowling, he released the bushes, so the branches swung back into their original positions. As he turned to Cait, he heard thrusting and moaning sounds which declared quite plainly that Myra and the guardsman had consummated their relationship.

His face twisting in revulsion, Zahir grunted to Cait, "I can't believe some people have sex in the middle of gardens. Some humans just don't want to accept that they aren't jackrabbits or dogs in the heat, it seems."

"Sex doesn't gross me out as long as it is done with love by consenting people." Cait shrugged as they set off down the cobblestone path back toward the palace and the Rider barracks. "There's nothing disgusting about an act of love. Society's conviction that there is explains why it is so hard for us to be together, Zahir."

"I doubt that Myra loves the man she is with," sneered Zahir. "If you ask me, she seems to be an easy lay. She flirted with me when I first became the king's squire, she accused a sentinel who had sex with her in Persopolis of rape, and she is now sleeping with another sentry. She gets around more than the average sailor does, apparently."

"If she is an easy lay, that is her affair, not yours," pointed out Cait, resting her head on his shoulder. "It is her business, not yours, whom she sleeps with."

"It is disgusting and immoral for people to be screwing each other in the shrubbery of public gardens," hissed Zahir. "At the very least, girls like Myra should have the decency to take their latest victim to a bedroom."

"Well, obviously, everyone in the world should conform to your morals, as your ethics are superior to everybody else's, and, thus, should be the standards for the entire world." Cait nudged him in the ribs. "Does that sound about right to you?"

"You're mocking me." Zahir glowered at her.

"Not really." Cait grinned. "I respect you for your strong moral code. I just think that you need to understand that everybody has the right to define their own ethics. Besides, I feel that, when it comes to sex, it is especially true that people make the bed that they lie in. Apart from that, you just need to remember that people want different things out of relationships—"

"I certainly don't want an easy lay." Zahir sniffed, lifting his nose into the air.

"Of course not." Tossing her copper-gold hair back, Cait laughed. "If you did, you chose the wrong girl."

As they neared the expanse of grass and practice courts that divided the palace from the Rider barracks, she added, "Anyway, we better head back to our own beds now before people start accusing us of doing the same thing that you caught Myra doing with her soldier boy."

"Good night, my soldier girl," Zahir teased, smirking. Then, he bent down and kissed her, his tongue darting inside her mouth to squirm around like eels with hers for a minute before they separated, breathing hard.

"Good night, squire boy," called Cait over her shoulder as she raced off into the darkness to return to the Rider barracks.

The glorious, exhilarating memory of his time with Cait was enough to give Zahir sweet dreams for what remained of the night. In the morning, he woke up feeling a tremendous affection for the realm at large, because Cait was a part of it. The light that he imagined was Cait continued to burn in his chest as he brushed his hair, scrubbed his face, cleaned his teeth, and dressed.

Since he had seen golden streams of sunlight filtering in through his window, Zahir chose to take a buttered roll up to the ramparts, instead of sitting down for breakfast. Life was too wonderful to sit down through most of it, he thought as he strode along the ramparts, which were almost as empty as the gardens had been the previous evening, munching on his roll.

He was halfway through his breakfast when he spotted Princess Shinkokami and her ladies feeding a flock of robins hunks of bread. He doubted that gorgeous, exotic women would bother with him on a beautiful morning like today when puffy, white clouds floated across a sapphire sky, and a breeze wafted over them all like some divine breath. Therefore, he was rather surprised when Princess Shinkokami turned to say to him as he passed, "Good morning. I remember you from last night's banquet, although I don't believe we were introduced."

"We weren't, but my name is Zahir ibn Alhaz." Zahir bowed, thinking that it was easy to be courteous on a lovely day when he had spent part of the previous evening kissing the girl he loved. "I'm the king's squire."

"Yes, he mentioned you." Princess Shinkokami smiled politely at him. "He told me that you were Prince Roald's age and that you had gone through page training with my fiancé."

"His Majesty was right," Zahir stated, anticipating that this would be the end of the exchange.

He was taken aback when Princess Shinkokami proved this assumption wrong, leaning forward to ask in a voice soft enough not to be overheard by her ladies, "What is my fiancé like?"

Gazing into her beautiful, exotic face, which she was determinedly keeping in a polite mask, Zahir began to realize just how difficult marrying someone she had never met must be for her. She had never laid eyes on Prince Roald, so she couldn't know whether her future mate was as attractive as Jonathan and Thayet or ugly enough to pass for a horse's backside. She had never conversed with the prince, and so she couldn't know whether he was respectful, kind, and intelligent, or rude, cruel, and stupid. She had never interacted with the prince on any level, and so she couldn't have a clue whether he would treat her with gentleness or with harshness. In short, she was headed blind into a marriage she could not step out of even if she began to dislike what she saw.

Somehow he knew that Princess Shinkokami was strong enough to do her duty, but she was still human enough to be sacred. The fact that she was terrified about what her future marriage would be like somehow made her seem even braver to Zahir. She might be exotic, he decided, but her feelings were not so foreign from his. Under the skin, her heart was the same as his.

"The prince is reserved, much like you, Your Highness, but when he speaks, he is listened to, because what he has to say is always intelligent," Zahir responded, looking into her eyes that only proved her heart really was the same as his. "He is respectful of everyone, and he doesn't make a habit of pulling his rank, but, when he wants to, he can be every bit as stubborn as his parents. He is kind, and everybody likes him, so I don't doubt that you will, too. As far as appearance goes, he inherited his father's eyes and his black hair could have come from either of his parents, so he is not a slouch in the looks department. I think that adequately sums up how inoffensive he is."

"I'm sure that I will like him." Princess Shinkokami tore off a piece of bread and offered it to a robin that had been pecking at her sleeve. "You're a Bazhir from the desert, are you not?"

"I am." Zahir nodded. "I've been mostly living in the north since I was ten-years-old, Your Highness."

"It must have been difficult for you to move so far from your home," murmured Princess Shinkokami, feeding another robin.

"I missed my family, my friends, and my tribe as a whole with our food, our stories, and our daily customs, Your Highness," Zahir agreed, ripping off a chunk of his roll and allowing a bird to eat it out of his palm. "I missed the tents, the low tables, the pillows, and the bright rugs. I missed the women in their veils and the smells of their cooking. I missed herding sheep with the men. I missed watching the children laugh as they played their games. I missed riding with my tribe through the desert wind. I missed drinking from a cold oasis on a sweltering day. I missed the sand, and the way it covered everything, worming in through every hole of fabric. I even missed the sun, because the sunlight is different in the north than in the desert. In the desert, it is stronger, because there is nothing to block it. Here, the sun's rays are much feebler and much less overwhelming."

Flushing as he understood that he had been babbling, he added, as it occurred to him that Princess Shinkokami must be thinking of the Yamani Islands that she had just left behind forever to be a stranger in a strange land as much as he was, "I take comfort from the fact that I can always imagine what it would be like to be in the desert. I can always imagine how it would taste to be eating Bazhir food again, or how it would feel to drink water from an oasis while the desert sun pounded into my back. As long as I can imagine these things, I haven't really lost them. If we can remember something, it's not really gone."

"We can always imagine, and that is what sets us apart from robins." Princess Shinkokami stared out over the ramparts, looking down upon Corus, where Zahir could imagine bustling shops and marketplaces, women washing clothes and cooking meals, children completing chores in a rush in order to have more time to play games, and men working every trade to support their families. "Imagination can make us hope or despair. It can sustain or destroy us. Everything depends on what we imagine and how we imagine it."


	50. Chapter 50

Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed last chapter. You are all awesome. If you haven't received a personal thank you message from me in your inbox yet, rest assured that one will arrive for you in the near future. I've been busy writing this chapter, but everybody's feedback was taken into account when writing this even if I haven't gotten a chance to respond to you before posting this. Hopefully, you all will find something to enjoy in this installment.

Destiny

Zahir knew just by waking up a week later that the warmth of a northern spring had been replaced by the heat of a northern summer. His blankets and nightclothes clung to him in a sweat that had nothing to do with any nightmares he had that night. The sun was blazing through his windows, cutting through his eyelids to prevent him from sleeping any longer, and the sky was a jumble of tan, burgundy, and mauve streaks when, only days ago, it had been nothing more than a dull gray pre-dawn mush. In the trees, the birds were cawing out a welcome to the new day.

Mentally cursing the birds and the sunlight, Zahir wrapped his pillow around his head, hoping that it would render him blind and deaf to the outside world. Sleeping in the desert was so much easier than this. Bazhir tents were made of strong fabric enough to block out the piercing, omnipresent desert sun, and there were no ridiculous windows to admit bright rays of sun at unholy hours such as this in Bazhir tents. In the desert, every dawn wasn't a chorus of birds singing some terrible excuse of an opera to the rising sun, either.

To his aggravation, he discovered that the cawing of the birds penetrated his pillow, their shrieks only slightly muffled. With a sigh, he shoved himself out of bed, knelt to offer his morning prayer, and then rose to clean and dress himself for the day.

As he washed his face, it occurred to him that he would like nothing more than to shoot some of the wretched birds. While he cleaned his teeth and threw on his clothes, he reminded himself that Bazhir respected all life, no matter how annoying at dawn. Bazhir did not kill animals they had no intention of eating.

A bit of target practice was never amiss, though, he told himself as he gathered his bow and quiver of arrows, and then headed out of the palace down to the training yards. He would aim at the archery target, pretending that every arrow that thudded into the bull's eye had slain an obnoxious bird.

When he stepped out of the castle, he discovered that the sun was far stronger than it had been indoors. As he crossed the lush, well-maintained grass down to the practice courts, he had to squint against the light. Living through four different seasons made it difficult to adjust to the summer sun. In the desert, where there was only one season, it was impossible to forget how to deal with the overpowering and the oppressive heat it emitted.

At first, when he saw a cluster of Yamani ladies, including Princess Shinkokami, decked out in vibrant kimonos tossing what appeared to be a crimson blur to one another, he assumed it was a mirage. However, as he edged closer to them, he saw that the scarlet blur was a fan with razor-sharp tips, and that the women were coming into greater detail, not fading away in a treacherous flicker of sunlight.

His forehead knotting, Zahir leaned against the fence surrounding the practice court the princess and her ladies were using, and stared, trying to make sense of what was transpiring.

The fan looked like a red butterfly as it spun in the air, and the Yamani ladies were as agile as dancers as they tossed the fan ever higher after it completed a circuit of the group. He didn't know whether to feel awed by their beauty and grace, baffled by their foreign manners and dress, or appalled that Princess Shinkokami , who had seemed so conventional, would spend her morning in the training yards rather than strolling with her ladies.

Finally, the princess called for a water break. As the ladies sipped daintily from canteens, Princess Shinkokami walked over to him, remarking, "You seemed to enjoy the show."

Blushing to the roots of his jet black hair even though the princess's polite smile hadn't wavered, Zahir mumbled, "I'm surprised to see you on the practice courts so early, Your Highness."

"Nothing awakens the mind like some morning exercise." Princess Shinkokami nodded at Zahir's bow and quiver of arrows. "Apparently, you already know that, Squire Zahir."

"What's that?" Zahir frowned at the fan the princess was clutching. "I've never encountered anything like it before."

"It's a shukusen or lady fan," explained Princess Shinkokami. "If a lady feels endangered but doesn't want to complicate things by openly carrying a weapon, she takes a shukusen with her."

"You aren't in any peril in Tortall." Zahir's eyes narrowed as he studied this foreign princess with her exotic fashions and notions. "Your Highness, I didn't know you could fight."

"Well, I wasn't aware that we were discussing fighting," answered Princess Shinkokami, delicately fanning herself as if she were a frail flower instead of a rose with thorns. "I thought that we were speaking of self-defense, Zahir ibn Alhaz, and I believe there is a difference between fighting and self-defense."

"A lady, Your Highness, has no need for self-defense." Zahir pressed his lips together in disapproval. "Women can rely on emotionally and physically stronger men, who are better equipped to fight offensively and defensively, to protect them."

"In a perfect world, nobody would need to know self-defense, since no one would fight with anyone else." The polite smile etched on the princess's face made it impossible for Zahir to discern what her true feelings were. "We, unfortunately, live in an imperfect world. Sometimes women need to know how to defend themselves because the men who should be protecting them decide to abuse them instead."

Remembering how Joren had kidnapped Mindelan's innocent maidservant, how Nadir had beaten up Nasira, and how the guard in Persopolis had violated Myra, Zahir scowled. Men who abused women were scum, but other men couldn't always be around to save a woman from abduction, violence, or rape. Maybe sometimes, as horrible as it was to acknowledge, women did have to defend themselves against brutal men. Perhaps it wasn't always wrong for women to fight.

After all, hadn't he been the one to slip a dagger into Laila's hand when she was about to ride back to his tribe, which had been conquered by Nadir? Hadn't he told her how to maim and kill with it because he would rather than she maim and kill than be maimed and killed? Yes, he had prayed that she would have no cause to employ the knife, but that didn't alter the fact that he had given her one and told her what to do with it.

Still, there was no denying that self-defense just wasn't a traditional female art, and so it was justly troublesome for him to see the future queen, who he had imagined to be a proper lady, practicing it.

"Self-defense isn't something women are customarily trained in," he established stiffly after a moment's pause.

"Traditions vary from place to place." The princess's gaze was level, even if her tone was quiet. "In the Yamani Islands, where attacks from Scanran raiders and the Copper Isles are commonplace, it is as customary for ladies of noble rank to learn self-defense as it is for women of Bazhir ancestry to don the veil."

"Wearing the veil is a personal decision," announced Zahir, lifting his nose in the air haughtily. People who didn't understand the Bazhir always used the veil as an excuse to launch into how Bazhir men supposedly repressed, physically abused, and verbally demeaned Bazhir women, who apparently were all too weak and stupid to spot or challenge such mistreatment. As far as he was concerned, the northern culture, which forced women to wear corsets that often caused them to faint and high heels that made them trip in pursuit of an unrealistic ideal of attractiveness, should sweep out its own dirty floor before attempting to criticize the housekeeping skills of other ethnic groups. "Bazhir women cover their faces out of a modest respect for themselves, their people, and their gods, just as Bazhir men often choose not to touch females outside of their family for the same reasons. I happen to know a Bazhir woman who chooses not to wear the veil. While I don't approve of her decision, I don't force her to wear the veil. That's not repression; if anything, it's too much liberty."

"Bazhir women should have every right to wear veils, because it is their custom, and I should have every right to honor my heritage by practicing the traditional means of self-defense taught to Yamani ladies," responded Princess Shinkokami smoothly, her polite smile still in place.

"You could choose not to practice self-defense just like the Bazhir woman I know decided not to wear the veil," Zahir pointed out, his fingers clenching his bow. "Now that you are in Tortall, you can give up that bellicose custom, and no one would bat an eyelash. Everybody would bat an eyelash if you keep it, you know."

"Yes." There was almost a melancholy twist to the princess's smile now. "I do realize that, thank you, Squire Zahir. I just have surrendered so many of my traditions that I want to hold onto one that helps me release the stress that can build up in me as I strive to make myself at home in my new country."

Before Zahir could answer, she pivoted gracefully on her heel and returned to her ladies, who were waiting for her to come back to them to resume their exercise, calling over her shoulder, "Have a good day."

He mumbled the same well-wish under his breath, fully cognizant that she wouldn't hear his words. Then, he strode down to the archery targets, his brain whizzing from thought to thought like a bee darting from blossom to blossom in the hope of collecting as much nectar as possible.

He had told Princess Shinkokami that she, Aisha, and all the Bazhir women had the power to choose, he noted inwardly as he arrived at the archery field and readied his bow with an arrow from his quiver. He had insisted that she could abandon her practice of self-defense just like Aisha had forsaken the custom of wearing a veil.

Taking aim at the center of the target across the yard from him, Zahir wondered if he had been wrong. As he relinquished his grip on the string holding his arrow and watched the arrow soar away from him toward the target, he couldn't stop the nasty voice in his head that demanded how much choice any of them really had.

Since before he could walk, he had been trained to ride and to shoot a small bow. From what seemed like a million leagues away, he saw the arrow hit the bull's eye of the target. Reflexively, he removed another arrow from his quiver, nooked it, took aim, and fired the arrow down the field toward the bull's eyes.

As soon as he could walk without falling flat on his face two steps later, he had been taught to fight with fists and with knives. His second arrow rammed into the center of the target, and, without pausing, he picked out another arrow from his quiver, attached it to the bowstring, took aim, and shot it across the yard. There had never been any question of what his future would hold. Before he had learned to think for himself, what he should be and should want had been hammered into his head.

The third arrow smacked into the middle of the target, as he concluded bitterly that by the time he had reached the age when he could really think for himself, his brain had been so manipulated by his parents and his society as a whole that he could scarcely even imagine not traveling down the path he had been pointed down since he had been born. By the time he had been of an age to choose for himself, there had been no real choice left for him at all.

It was the same with Joren, Vinson, Garvey, and Prince Roald. All of them wanted to be what they were told to be. Each one of them were nothing more than empty vessels carrying out the duties they had been instructed to fulfill since they were old enough to speak. None of them had any true goals of their own. Every one of them had been tricked into believing that the dreams of others were their aspirations.

Even people like Aisha, Zahir thought, weren't really free. After all, their adamantine refusal to be fettered by tradition only seemed to bind them ever more tightly to custom. In a perverse fashion, insisting on doing the opposite of what was traditional meant that one was just as limited in what one could or couldn't do.

When it came down to it, there was no way to shape your own future. You were who you were born and raised to be, not who you chose to be, because free will was an illusion. At birth, your entire destiny was determined. There was no escaping fate, and, even if you were a king, you would never be anything more than a pawn in a cosmic game of chess. Choice was a hollow word employed by those who couldn't accept the fact that they would never be free.

Numbly wondering how he could possibly find meaning in a world where individual actions could no longer matter if there was no choice behind them, he gathered up his arrows and bow. Then, wishing that it was his destiny to die soon instead of having to shuffle through a life that was meaningless since it had already been pre-determined when he drew his first breath, he returned to the palace and walked down the corridors back to the royal quarters.

As soon as he entered the royal chambers, Myra besieged him, informing him in one breathless burst, "There you are. I've been looking all over for you. The king wants you to wait on him and some guests in the conference room."

Shoving a tray loaded with a pitcher of juice, four glasses, and napkins into his hands, she added, "Take this. You don't have time to change. You've already kept His Majesty waiting long enough."

Zahir, about to mutter that King Jonathan and his guests could have been served by any number of the servants proliferating in the royal quarters, found the comment melting in his mouth as he spotted a silver band glittering on her left ring finger.

"Is that an engagement ring?" he demanded, nodding at the gleaming ring.

"Of course," Myra answered, and, although her tone was breezy, there were red splotches on her cheeks which suggested that she was actually quite pleased to discuss her betrothal even with him. "I've been engaged to the guardsman Holden Oakes for the past two weeks, haven't you heard?"

"Oh," he grunted, wrong-footed. The knowledge that Myra had been betrothed to the soldier he had witnessed her having intercourse with in the garden changed his perception of that scene. Even though it was still disgusting to envision her and the sentry rutting into each other like animals amidst the shrubbery, it was less revolting when he knew that they would be wed in a few months. Although he was convinced that people should only sleep with beings they were married to, he wasn't too horrified by the notion of engaged couples having sex. After all, a betrothal made it clear that a couple was in a committed relationship and that the individuals in question weren't making a habit of screwing anything that walked.

Then, remembering his manners, he continued in a less gruff voice, "Well, congratulations, then. Good luck in your future marriage."

As he headed down the hall to the conference room, carrying the tray, he observed mentally that he would be wishing people good luck a lot more now that he realized that everybody's destiny was completely governed by destiny. If nobody had any control over their futures and no one had the power to make any of their own decisions, fortune was the only thing that could really be of any help to anyone. Everything else—virtue, valor, friendship, family, love, and talent—was, ultimately, of no avail.

When he pushed through the conference room door, he discovered with a jolt of shock that pulsed through his veins that the king's guests were a motley bunch, consisting of Alanna the temperamental Lioness, Nealan the Impudent of Queenscove, and Duke Baird of Queenscove, who was head of the palace healers.

"You didn't mention that the knight who was interested in my humble squiring abilities was none other than the famous Lioness." Nealan glanced at his father as Zahir poured King Jonathan a cup of juice. "You also failed to inform me, Father, that the king would be present. If I had known how many exalted personages were concerned about my future, I would have preened like a peacock before joining such distinguished company."

"You can compensate for you failure to preen by being on your best behavior now," Duke Baird educated his son dryly as Zahir set the glass of juice before the king.

"Why, Father?" Neal's green eyes contracted menacingly as Zahir poured a cup of juice for the duke. "Shouldn't the Lioness see me in all my acerbic glory before she formally offers me a position as her squire? Doesn't she deserve to know what she may be signing herself up for when she agrees to deal with me and my charming tongue, which many regard as my best feature?"

"Your tongue has nothing to do with the subject at hand," remarked Alanna tersely, as Zahir placed the glass of juice in front of Duke Baird. "Before you enrolled in knighthood training, you studied the healing arts for several years. It doesn't make sense for you to be just a knight when you could also be a healer. I can provide you with the training you need to serve the realm as both a healer and a knight."

"The country requires healers too much to let one who has been trained to the degree you have not be used," put in King Jonathan, while Zahir poured Alanna a cup of juice. "Knights, like my champion, who are both warriors and healers are of tremendous value to the kingdom."

"You are being offered a chance to achieve all your dreams, Neal," Duke Baird contributed, glancing mildly across the polished wood table at his only surviving son. "I know, even if you won't confess it, how much it pained you to give up being a healer in order to become a knight. Well, now you don't have to do that. You can be both a healer and a knight. Alanna will train you well in both fields."

"Do I have a choice in all this?" hissed Neal, a vein throbbing in his neck and his emerald eyes sizzling. "You talk about my dreams, Father, but did you know that it was never my wish to be Sir Alanna's squire? No, that was Kel's dream. That was all she ever worked for, you see. It would destroy her if her heroine picked me over her just because everyone decided for me that I need to complete my healer training. Somehow you all reckon I'm just going to betray my best friend like that, is that it? Apparently, you are all thicker than concussed trolls, then, since I'll never be a healer and a knight if that means becoming a traitor to my best friend, too. All in all, thank you for your kind offer, Sir Alanna, but you can shove it up your—"

"Be quiet, son," his father ordered, interjecting upon Neal's tirade, which probably would have ended with a lurid description of how Alanna's rear end could be utilized as a makeshift filing cabinet. "Think about what you are being offered here."

"Poison in a golden chalice, that's what," scoffed Neal, throwing his head back defiantly. "No matter how much sugar you try to add to the hemlock, Father, I won't drink it."

"Can't you, for once, trust that I know what's best for you?" sighed Duke Baird, and Zahir, too caught up in the debate, forgot entirely about placing the glass of juice he had poured in front of Alanna.

"If you are going to serve the Crown as a knight, you should practice obeying your king now," King Jonathan stated, as calm as the surface of a lake on a windless day. "Four years from now, you will publically swear allegiance to the Crown. Why won't you live according to that promise now, Nealan of Queensove?"

Recalling with a surge of resentment that tasted like vinegar in his mouth how he had been compelled by this same persuasive argument from the king to accept King Jonathan's offer to be his knightmaster, Zahir shouted abruptly, "Do what you want, Nealan of Queenscove! Don't let them bully you into doing what you don't wish to do. Decide for yourself who you want to be your knightmaster for the next four years of your life."

"Squire, this is none of your affair," declared the king in a clipped manner that made it obvious that right now Zahir was to be seen and not heard. "Your opinion is not pertinent to this conversation."

"Is that so, sire?" Zahir snarled, his temper flaring, because this was no longer about knightmasters and squires. It was about free will and fate. It was about, just once, allowing someone to choose their own destiny. "It's funny you should say that, since I'm the only one here who has been coerced into being a squire for somebody. I'm the only one present who can tell Nealan of Queenscove what a pile of droppings your argument is. My experiences should make my views far more relevant to Nealan of Queenscove than all the dribble the rest of you are spewing put together."

"Enough, Zahir," snapped King Jonathan, raising a quelling hand. "Go to your room. You can copy out Bazhir inheritance laws until I come tell you to stop."

"I've said my piece anyway, Your Majesty, and nothing you say will be able to take back my words," pointed out a mutinous Zahir. Then, without bothering to bow, he strode out of the conference room, nose aloft.

He returned to his bedroom, glad that he had at least fought fate a little. Maybe nobody could defeat destiny, he thought as he pulled out a book on Bazhir law, a scroll of parchment, and a quill from his desk drawers. Sometimes it was enough to fight even if victory was unattainable.

As he began to scribble out a law about how much of a deceased husband's property went to a widow, he found that his mind wasn't on legal codes or the debate he had participated in moments ago in the conference room. Instead, he was thinking about Myra and her soldier.

His father would never have approved of Myra sleeping with her boyfriend before marriage. Alhaz would have decried it as yet another example of northern immorality. Alhaz would have sternly reminded his son that Myra could have ended up pregnant, faced with the grim choice of swallowing enough of the herbs necessary to induce a miscarriage before she showed or of keeping the baby and ruining her reputation.

Zahir could envision exactly what Alhaz would say in such a situation, because he remembered as vividly as if it had transpired yesterday the serious discussion his father had initiated with him before he had started page training.

_It was a scorching morning even by desert standards. As he and his father herded the sheep toward the oasis, Zahir, who had just turned ten, could have sworn that he could see the water boiling just as he could feel the blood in his veins bubbling like overheated stew. _

"_A few days from now, you will be traveling north to train as a knight," his father observed as they reached the oasis, and the sheep lapped the water eagerly. "It is necessary and inevitable that you will conform to many northern customs when you inhabit their land." _

"_Yes, Father," Zahir agreed, nodding, even though he thought at the time that he would die before he abandoned any element of his heritage in favor of any northern traditions. All northern customs, as far as he could discern then, were dishonorable, and a Bazhir without honor had nothing no matter what else he might have possessed. _

"_However, one tradition you will not adopt is the loose sexual mores that prevail in the north," his father went on, eyeing Zahir darkly. "In the north, men and women do things together that men and women among the Bazhir refrain from doing with one another until the shaman says the words making it acceptable in the eyes of the gods. I suppose that, before you go off to live in a sea of northern lads, I must explain to you what I mean by that." _

"_You don't have to, Father." His cheeks flaming like the sun blazing in the cobalt dome of the sky above them, Zahir lowered his head as he scuffed his feet in the sand, kicking up puffs of it. "I've seen stallions mount mares. I've watched rams butt into ewes. I know how babies are made." _

"_Well, with humans, it is not typically so brutal and bestial," his father replied, looking more discomfited than Zahir had ever seen him. "When humans do it, it is normally a wonderful, loving, and uniting experience. At least, it is when it is performed within the bonds of a marriage. Outside the ties of matrimony, it is filthier than it could ever be when done by animals. Fornication and adultery are two of the gravest sins humans can commit against the gods and against each other. Even when you think that you are in love with the prettiest girl you have ever met, you must remember that, son, if you value your soul." _

_Shooting Zahir a severe glance, Alhaz stipulated, "In the north, you will not dance at all, and especially not with any females. You will try to keep from touching women as much as possible. If you must, make crude jokes with your male friends, but never crack them in mixed company. To jest about such dirty topics before a female is to impugn her virtue by implying that she is familiar with such impure things. Certainly, you will never deprive a woman of her honor by stealing her maidenhead unless you have been bound in matrimony." _

"_I understand, Father." Nodding, Zahir thought that he didn't even want to kiss girls, nevertheless do anything else with them. _

"_Good. Then I will tell you one more thing." As if to ensure that he had his son's undivided attention, Alhaz gripped Zahir's shoulder. "You may have wondered why your mother isn't the daughter of a chief like the wives of most of my fellow headsmen are." _

"_I have," Zahir confirmed quietly, cocking his head sidewise. He had never received a satisfactory answer to this question he had never had the nerve to pose. _

"_The truth is that, when I was a young man and your mother was a young woman, we fell in love with each other," explained his father, staring at the sheep in the oasis now, as if he could not bear to look at Zahir as he made this confession. "We acted upon our feelings, even though the shaman hadn't said the words that would render it acceptable in the eyes of the gods to do so. Your mother became pregnant with Laila as a result. As you should be aware by now, your mother could have been stoned for fornication after she had given birth to Laila. If I had admitted to being her partner, I would have been stoned as well." _

"_Would you have confessed, Father?" an ashen-faced Zahir wanted to know, his mouth as dry as the sand beneath his feet. _

"_Of course." His father's lips thinned into a firm line. "If your mother was to be punished for being with me, it would only be fair that I also be punished for being with her. Besides, son, stoning may kill a body, but it also has a potential for saving a soul." _

"_It does, Father?" Dubiously, Zahir frowned. _

"_Yes," answered his father, still gazing at the sheep rather than at Zahir. "When a person dies being stoned, they die paying for their sin. Thus, if a person, while being stoned, repents, they die in a penitent state, atoning for their crime against the gods and mankind. It is far better to die in such a manner than to save yourself and allow a woman you slept with to take all the punishment for your mutual sin." _

"_Why are you, Mother, Laila, Aisha, and me alive then?" demanded Zahir, his forehead knotting in bemusement. _

"_I lied to my father, Zahir," responded his father, his voice bleak. "That was the only lie that I ever told in my life, and I've been atoning for it ever since. I said to him that I was in love with your mother, and that I wouldn't marry anyone except her. I didn't mention the fact that she was carrying my baby, and I was eventually able to wed her before her pregnancy showed. When she gave birth, Laila, at full term, was small enough to be passed off as a premature baby who survived by a miracle. I tell you this so that you know that you are only here because your mother chose not to swallow the herbs that could have terminated her pregnancy with Laila and because I would not abandon a woman who I had gotten in trouble. I also tell you this so that you realize that, if you find yourself in my plight, I cannot be hoodwinked as my father was. If you get a girl pregnant outside of marriage, look to the gods for mercy, not me, since I won't be granting you any clemency." _

A sharp rap on his door jarred him out of his memory. Before he could respond to the knock on his door, his knightmaster entered, admonishing him, "Your behavior was utterly disgraceful to you and me, Squire."

"I don't see what was so awful about it." Stubbornly, Zahir shook his head. "All I did was speak the truth and provide Nealan of Queenscove with honest advice. It's really quite ludicrous that you felt the need to punish me for that, sire."

"Well, you'll be sorry to hear that Nealan of Queenscove has disregarded your advice," King Jonathan updated him coldly. "He has wisely chosen to become the Lioness' squire."

"She'll kill him within the week, Your Majesty, because Lord Wyldon, who is far less of an explosive personality, has nearly strangled Queenscove on countless occasions." Zahir snorted. "Then again, I really don't care that much, as Queenscove was always obnoxious to me and practically everyone else during page training."

"That's enough nonsensical talk from you. Let's see what you have accomplished since you came in here." As he established as much, the king snatched the parchment off Zahir's desk. When he discovered that his squire had only copied down half of one law, he arched his eyebrows. "Is this all you have done?"

"No, sire." Zahir rolled his eyes derisively. "The rest, of course, is written in invisible ink."

"Don't try my patience further, Squire." His knightmaster's eyes, which were as frigid as ice, lanced into him, freezing him from neck to toe. "Every time you decide to daydream instead of focusing on your work, you hurt the Bazhir. When you neglect to learn the laws of your people, you fail all of them. Disrespect me like this, and you really insult every one of them."

"This is all so pointless, Your Majesty. I'll never remember all of this gibberish, anyway," growled Zahir, tugging the parchment out of King Jonathan's hands and ripping it into sixths. "I've got too much other stuff crowding my brain."

"You imagine that Bazhir law is the only thing I have in my head?" the king inquired, all frostiness.

"Well, if you have more than just a million laws where the rest of us have memories, maybe you'll understand that I didn't mean to get lost in my head, sire," retorted Zahir. "I just started thinking about a conversation I had with my father, and I couldn't stop until you distracted me by knocking on my door."

"I know you well enough to comprehend that your bad attitude won't subside until you've spoken about what's troubling you." His knightmaster sighed. "Why don't you save us some time and tell me what's bothering you, Zahir?"

"A week ago, I saw Myra making love to a guardsman in the garden." Unable to conceal his distaste for the location the lovers had selected to consummate their relationship he asked in a harsh voice, "What would have happened if she became pregnant outside of marriage, Your Majesty?"

"Why do you ask?" The king scrutinized him. "You didn't get Cait in trouble, did you, Squire?"

"No, sire," huffed Zahir, folding his arms across his chest. "It's very insulting that you'd believe Cait or I would do something to put ourselves in such an unenviable position."

"You might see it as enviable." King Jonathan's eyes were hard as granite as they locked on Zahir. "Indeed, you might perceive it as a manner in which to circumvent my objections to you marrying Cait. You might imagine that if you got her in trouble, I'd have no choice but to permit you to marry her."

"Well, you wouldn't." Zahir ground his teeth together. "You couldn't stop me from doing the honorable thing by Cait and marrying her, Your Majesty."

"Marriage isn't the only way to deal with a pregnancy outside the bounds of matrimony," his knightmaster reminded him softly. "There are herbs women can swallow to relieve themselves of the burden of an undesired pregnancy."

"That's murder, sire." Blood pounded against Zahir's eardrums as he shook his head fervidly. "An innocent baby can't just be killed to protect the parents."

"It's not a baby before birth, and murder is a strong word, Zahir," the king corrected him quietly.

"Pardon me, Your Majesty." Zahir offered a bitter, almost hysterical, laugh. "I forgot, according to progressives, that a woman has a perfect right to kill her baby in her womb, but once the child is outside the womb, then she doesn't have the right to spank her child or anything. I mean, if a woman's right to choose is so sacred that it justifies murder, why doesn't it make spanking an acceptable parenting practice, as well? Of course, that would be allowing someone to choose something that didn't align with the progressive agenda, so we must not permit that. Then, of course, if the human body is so wonderful that it can never be violated, why can a mother kill her baby but not spank her child? I guess, with progressives, life only matters when it is outside the womb. That is the most logically and ethically consistent position anyone could have."

"It horrifies me that you, of all people, would condone physically disciplining children." King Jonathan's lips pressed together for a moment, and then he went on, "Besides, whatever you would like to believe on the contrary, women do have the right to choose whether they want to be mothers."

"I should think they make that decision when they have sex, sire," Zahir countered heatedly.

"What of those situations where a woman doesn't choose to have sex?" pressed his knightmaster, all ice as he arched an eyebrow.

"It's still wrong to punish a child for the crimes of the father, Your Majesty." Resolutely, Zahir lifted his chin. "Killing an unborn baby will just add to the trauma a woman feels when she has been raped."

"Raising a child resulting from a rape might very well be even more painful than deliberately miscarrying it," replied the king in a tight tone. "There are also times when a mother might feel that she is unable to provide for her child, and so the most merciful thing to do is to abort the baby."

"The most merciful thing in circumstances where the mother can't, for whatever reason, raise the child is to give the child to a convent or monastery," Zahir spat, a crimson, fiery blaze raging in his face, his heart, and his mind. "Convents and monasteries are quite happy to educate such children and to provide them with a better life than most peasants have, sire."

"It's hard for a woman to give birth to a child and then hand her offspring over to other people to raise." King Jonathan scowled. "You might consider that, Zahir."

"Why, Your Majesty?" seethed Zahir, his hands balling into fists. "I thought we were concerned about what was best for the child, not the mother. Of course, if Cait were pregnant, you wouldn't really be worried about what was best for her. You'd just want her to kill the baby so that I wouldn't have to marry her. It wouldn't be her choice at all. It would be your choice, and I bet that most women who deliberately miscarry have been forced to do so by fathers or boyfriends. Most of the time, it's probably not about what's best for the women or children, but about what is best for the fathers or boyfriends. That's the glorious right to choose that so many progressives defend."

"Calm down, Squire." His knightmaster reached out to clasp his shoulder. "If Cait isn't even pregnant, there's no need for you to work yourself into a fit over women deliberately miscarrying babies."

"Yes, there is, sire," snarled Zahir, his fingernails digging into the tender flesh of his own palms. "It's a matter of life or death for some babies, you know. In fact, my sister Laila might not even exist if my mother had been cowardly enough to swallow herbs to induce a miscarriage when she realized she was pregnant with my father's child before they were married. I wouldn't be here if my father hadn't found a way to marry her before she showed and if Laila didn't look small enough when she was born at full term to pass for a premature child who lived by a miracle. My parents—or just my mother if my father didn't confess his crime—could have been stoned if my father hadn't tricked my grandfather into allowing their marriage. My mother and father never stopped trying to atone for that lie and for their sin of fornication, just as Laila has always been atoning for the trouble her pregnancy caused by always doing exactly what was expected of her. My whole family was created because my mother got pregnant outside of marriage. That's why I care so much."

"Given your family history, then, I can understand how sensitive a topic a woman's right to choose to have a child is for you," the king began in a gentler manner than he had been employing throughout much of his discussion with his squire, but Zahir interrupted him.

"A woman's right to choose," Zahir echoed, his mouth jerking downward cynically. "I'm not sure I believe that anyone has the power to really make their own decisions at all, Your Majesty. In that case, whether any particular gender has a right to make a choice about something becomes rather irrelevant, doesn't it? What's the point of fighting for the right to choose if no one actually has the ability to choose, anyway?"

"Everyone has the ability to choose," King Jonathan disagreed. "I'm confused at how you arrived at the conclusion that we don't have free will."

"If we have free will, why is everything about our futures determined at our birth?" Scathingly, Zahir snorted. "Why do we always become what we are bred to be or an extreme reaction against what we are reared to be? Why do we only want what we have been told to desire? Why are our dreams only those that have been passed down to us by our parents?"

"Tell me, Zahir." His expression thoughtful, the king stroked his beard. "What do you want? What are your dreams?"

"To become a knight. To be a fair and strong chief. To serve and protect my people. To love and to honor my family. To marry Cait," Zahir answered bluntly, not caring how much the last item on the list might vex his knightmaster.

"Hmm." King Jonathan paused and then asked, "Who told you to want to marry Cait?"

For a moment, Zahir hesitated before grudgingly conceding, "Myself, sire."

"Then I think you have proven to yourself that you have free will." Smiling slightly, the king swatted Zahir's knee. "When we are children, it is natural that we will unquestioningly accept the beliefs of our parents as truths and strive to imitate their behavior. That is part of the socialization process. Once we reach adolescence, we start rejecting the beliefs of our parents and begin rebelling against anyone who might be viewed by others as an authority figure. That is one of the ways in which we uncover who we are, what we value, and how we wish to live. Then, when we become adults, we often find that there are people for whom or causes for which we would surrender our free will in the service of, but, ironically, the very decision to not choose for ourselves is an expression of our free will. Free will was given to us by the gods at our birth, and we can never lose it."

"If the gods are all knowing, they must know how we will act before we do, and, if they are all powerful, they must dictate how we will act." Distrustful of the gods and all their supernatural attributes, Zahir narrowed his eyes. "Humans must always behave as the gods force them to, then, because how could weak humans defy supposedly omnipotent gods?"

"The omnipotent gods aren't spiritual rapists, Squire." His knightmaster's grin widened. "People pick their own destinies, and, although the gods know what we will decide before we do, that doesn't lessen our free will. The gods are so powerful that their might is not diminished by granting us free will."

"That's true even of those like the first Voice chosen by the gods?" inquired Zahir, his face a mask of skepticism.

"Of course." King Jonathan nodded. "Those who are chosen by the gods are able to decide whether they wish to cooperate with the grace of the gods that speaks to them in a special way. They are as free as anyone else to accept or reject the grace that the gods extend to them. That is precisely why their service to the gods can be honored so much, and why we can aspire to emulate them. The gods love us all so much that they let us choose to accept or reject that love. It only increases their glory when they allow us to become active participants in, rather than passive recipients of, our salvation. None of us could be righteous without the grace of the gods, but when the gods declare us righteous it is because we are truly so. The gods are the authors of truth, and so they wouldn't declare that a snow-covered dunghill was snow, not dung. They would transform the dunghill into snow and then call it snow."

"Well, I'm dung," muttered Zahir, making what he believed to be an accurate and frank assessment of his moral condition.

"Salvation is a process." His knightmaster chuckled. "You have a lifetime of choices ahead of you to help transfigure you into snow, Zahir."


	51. Chapter 51

Trials

Staring blankly out the window beside him at the last orange, burgundy, yellow, and russet leaves shining in the clear, crisp late November air, Zahir couldn't help but pity Prince Roald and Princess Shinkokami. Only yesterday evening, the Crown Prince had ridden in from Port Legann with his knightmaster, and now he was meeting his fiancée for the first time.

King Jonathan and Queen Thayet had concluded that it would be best if the prince and princess were introduced to each other privately—at a tea where the only other guests were the king and the queen themselves. Zahir even suspected that he had been chosen to serve at the tea because both the prince and princess knew him, so his presence wouldn't be too disconcerting to anyone.

At the moment, Zahir would have traded the Raven Armory dagger given to him by his knightmaster for the privilege of not being present. Of course, though, someone had to be around to bring in another tray of crumpets when they were running out and to carry in another pot of tea if it seemed to be getting lukewarm, or, gods forbid, cold. The king had decided that he, Zahir ibn Alhaz, would be the one to assume these august responsibilities, and Bazhir did not shirk their duties. They were bred to be faithful to their bone marrow.

Even though Zahir strove to minimize his presence by devoting his attention to the glorious autumn landscape that would soon fade into the gray bleakness of winter, he could still see the reflections of the parlor's other occupants in the glass and hear every word that was said. Looking into and out of the window, he thought that he would have to be blind not to spot the nervousness woven into the prince's and princess' body language, which was perhaps the only universal dialect in the world.

"You look more lovely, Your Highness, than I could possibly have imagined." Prince Roald bowed to his betrothed, kissing her gloved hand gallantly as he offered a traditional compliment to her beauty.

"Everyone assured me that you were handsome, Your Highness." Smiling as graciously as ever, Princess Shinkokami curtsied to her fiancé, her crimson Tortallan style gown, which emphasized her smooth skin, black hair, and ocher eyes, fanning around her. "None of them mentioned just how handsome you truly are, however."

"Your Highness is too kind," answered Prince Roald, bowing her onto the settee across from his parents before sitting beside her, taking care to position himself neither inappropriately close to her nor offensively far away from her. "I hope that your time in Tortall has been pleasant thus far."

"Oh, yes, it has been most pleasant, thank you." Princess Shikokami nodded, her courteous smile widening slightly as she spread apple butter over her crumpet with a gleaming silver knife. "I am already starting to think of it as my home."

"I'm delighted to hear that." After pausing to sip from his porcelain teacup, the prince wanted to know, "Are your quarters satisfactory, Your Highness?"

"Absolutely." The princess nibbled on her crumpet, and then went on, "They are quite comfortable and artfully decorated. The statues of cats you had placed in the rooms are particularly beautiful, Your Highness, and I thank you for thinking to include them in my chambers."

"I hope they will be a portent for a lucky marriage between us, Your Highness," remarked Prince Roald in a quiet voice, taking another drink of his tea.

"Me too," Princess Shinkokami murmured, her tone even softer than the prince's.

At this juncture, the two of them exchanged painfully expansive grins, which made it agonizingly apparent to everyone in the parlor that they were strangers desperately attempting to develop a rapport before the priests said the words that would bind them together for life.

Then, after a moment of beaming at each other, the couple descended into polite, meaningless conversation about the weather and the palace gardens. As the small talk continued for the rest of the tea, the king and queen intervened whenever the silence between the prince and princess became too protracted.

After the topics of the weather and the gardens had been discussed at a greater length than Zahir would have believed possible before serving at this tea, the torturously polite ordeal drew to a close. That meant that, once he had returned the empty tray and teapot to the kitchens, he would be free for the next few hours at least.

He had not been in his bedroom long enough to think about what he would do with a stretch of blank hours that many pages would kill for when a knock sounded on his door. "Come in," he called, praying to any merciful listening deity that his knightmaster wasn't about to have him serve at another tea.

This prayer was shown to be unnecessary when the door swung open to reveal Prince Roald, who quietly shut the door after he entered. Before Zahir could rise from his bed as etiquette dictated, the prince gestured at his desk chair, asking, "Do you mind if I sit there?"

"Of course not," replied Zahir, shaking his head and wondering what had prompted this visit from the prince. He and Prince Roald were not friends, and they weren't enemies. They were on good terms, because the prince seemed to have a policy of getting along with even the most obnoxious beings in the realm, but they did not, as a rule, seek each other out for casual conversation. "How may I help you, Your Highness?"

"I just want to talk, Zahir." Prince Roald offered a disarming grin that was so reminiscent of his father's that Zahir felt his guard increase reflexively, as he noted inwardly that no Conte ever just wanted to talk. "It's funny that we haven't seen much of each other even though you are my father's squire."

"Our duties to our respective knightmasters keep us occupied in different parts of the kingdom, for the most part," pointed out Zahir, his manner rather stiff. "You don't have to put on a charade about how sad you are not to see much of me, Your Highness. As a page, you may have taken care to eat with every group of boys, but I could notice that you joined my circle of friends the least."

"Maybe I'd like sitting with you more if you didn't adopt that hostile tone whenever anyone tries to make small talk with you," Prince Roald observed with a rather dry edge. "Anyway, I've heard that you and my fiancée get along well."

"We aren't really friends or anything, Your Highness." Zahir shrugged, abruptly hoping that his romance with Cait was gossiped about enough that the prince wouldn't suspect him and the princess of any illicit affair. "We've had a couple of conversations, and none of them turned into arguments, but that's about it. The extent of our connection is that we both know how it feels to be a stranger in the place that we are supposed to call home."

"I see." For a moment, the prince ducked his head, and then lifted it again. "I thought you might be able to provide me with some advice on how to have a real conversation with her, Zahir."

"Your teatime conversation with Princess Shinkokami already suggests that the pair of you will enjoy the politest marriage in the history of Tortall, Your Highness," commented Zahir, all wryness. "There is much to be said for a well-mannered marriage. Among the Bazhir, it is widely believed that mutual respect will eventually be transformed into the true love necessary to make the union wonderful."

"That's a widespread belief among Northerners, too," Prince Roald admitted. "I guess I just doubt that will happen when my manners never earned me any true friends in the pages' wing. Everybody seems to feel that I'm too stiff for anyone to know the real me, and it's impossible to love or even like someone you don't believe you truly know."

"Don't be silly, Your Highness," scoffed Zahir, waving a dismissive hand. "You got along with everyone in the pages' wing. At any table in the mess hall, you were welcome, and you could join any study group that you liked."

"Exactly." Prince Roald sighed. "I was welcome at any table in the mess hall, but not really wanted or expected at any one. I could join any study group, but I didn't have a true niche in any. Everybody was my friend, but no one was my particular friend the way Joren was yours."

For a long moment, Zahir just gawked at the prince. In the pages' wing, it was social suicide to reveal any sort of emotion beyond boredom at a dull lesson, exhaustion at the intense training regime, ambition to vanquish a rival, or defiance toward any authority figure. Pages never stopped talking with each other, but rarely did they actually say anything to one another. Confessing any real affection for a friend or a desire for friendship was the equivalent of begging to be strung out to die on the grapevine.

"Joren and I were rivals as much as we were friends," stated Zahir tersely, deciding that he had to volunteer some personal information as a tribute to Prince Roald's frankness. "From what I have heard, everybody likes the personality that you've revealed to them so far. Everyone only wishes that you would show more of it on a more frequent basis. If I were you, I'd just be myself around Princess Shinkokami. After all, it's not like you're as horrible as many people are."

"I can't be myself." Prince Roald shook his head. "I'm the Crown Prince, Zahir. There must always be a discrepancy between what I think and what I say or do. If I always acted according to my feelings, instead of following the rules, I would offend countless people every time I opened my mouth or moved. Being myself isn't worth jeopardizing the stability of the entire country. The peace should be broken only if the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs."

"Being yourself with your fiancée is not likely to disturb the peace of the realm." Zahir snorted. "You're just scared that the princess won't like you if you reveal your true self to her, Your Highness. Those of us who have feared being rejected by a girl recognize all the symptoms."

"I'm not scared of being rejected by my betrothed," responded the prince, his tone stiffer than Zahir had ever heard it.

"Are you angry, Your Highness?" Zahir wanted to know, amused, rather than intimidated, at the notion.

"No." Prince Roald pressed his lips together. "I've been feeling a bit _rebellious_ recently, you know, but I suppose that will pass in time."

"All teenagers feel a bit rebellious, and sometimes—oh, the horror—they even act rebellious," smirked Zahir. "Of course, as you say, you'll soon outgrow your rebellious phase. Then you'll be an adult, furious at young people for not obeying you unquestioningly."

Grinning slightly, the prince commented, "Well, we've examined in tremendous detail how I'm feeling. Why don't you tell me how you're doing, Zahir?"

"I'm feeling fine." As bored as ever by this polite, customary inquiry, Zahir shrugged.

"You didn't hear that the noble accused of hiring the men who kidnapped Mindelan's maid has been in custody since yesterday, then?" The smile disappeared from Prince Roald's face, replaced by a somber expression. "His advocate met with Duke Toromont yesterday, and it was determined that there was enough evidence to bring the noble to trial. This morning, the noble's advocate also entered a plea of not guilty with Duke Turomont. The name of the noble hasn't been released, but…"

"It's Joren." The blood coursing through Zahir's veins was transformed into magma as he lurched to his feet and hastily crossed the room. "I have to go see him now. Excuse me."

"You'll need to get permission from my father first," the prince told him as he hurriedly shut the door.

Mentally cursing his own stupidity, Zahir realized that Prince Roald was right. Since he was not Joren's advocate or a member of the Stone Mountain family, he would need permission from a magistrate or one of Tortall's monarchs in order to visit his old friend in the holding room reserved for nobles.

The blood surging through his body tinged his vision scarlet as he stormed into his knightmaster's study.

"To what do I owe this intrusion, Squire?" King Jonathan coolly arched an eyebrow at Zahir, who felt the rage inside him burning to feverish levels at the fact that the king would dare act innocent when the man had to comprehend what an important secret he was keeping from Zahir.

"You didn't tell me Joren was back, sire." Zahir's hands trembled as if they were an external reflection of the wrath whirling around inside him.

"You didn't need to know," answered his knightmaster calmly.

"He was my best friend for years," Zahir snarled, his shaking hands balling into fists. "If anyone needed to know, Your Majesty, it was me."

"As your knightmaster, I shall be the judge of what you need to know, not you," King Jonathan educated him crisply.

"I want you to sign a note giving me permission to see Joren now, sire." In his ire, Zahir could feel his whole body quivering like a dying autumn leaf in a windstorm.

"I don't think that would be a good idea," observed the king, his manner tart.

"I don't care, Your Majesty." Zahir gritted his teeth so loudly that he was convinced that the grinding could be heard across the Emerald Ocean. "I asked you to sign the note, not think it was a good idea."

"Ah, but I am not so foolish a king as to go around signing permission forms for my subjects to carry out plans that I don't think are good ideas," his knightmaster pointed out wryly.

"You mean that I'll have to persuade you that it's a good idea before you sign the cursed note," growled Zahir. Seething, he thought that he didn't have time to convince his thick-headed knightmaster of anything right now. King Jonathan always chose the least convenient moments to become as dumb as a boulder and just as immobile. "Well, if you want me to waste my time doing that, sire, you have to at least tell me why you don't think that it's a good idea for me to visit my friend in jail. After all, you didn't mind me seeing Beniamino when he was imprisoned for living by his principles—"

"Joren's principles are about a hundred times more repellent than Beniamino's." Sternly, the king shook his head. "Joren is locked up because his principles allowed him to abduct an innocent woman. Oddly enough, it makes me uneasy, Zahir ibn Alhaz, to think of my squire prolonging an association with such a person."

"Probably because you can't bear to imagine how your name might be dragged through the mud if your squire was rumored to be friends with a kidnapper, Your Majesty," sneered Zahir.

"No." His knightmaster's keen eyes seared into him. "My concern is all for you. You, squire, are in your formative years. That means you require positive influences in your life to shape you into the man you should be, and Joren happens to be a very negative influence indeed—"

"I'm supposed to just abandon him because he committed one crime, Your Majesty?" cut in Zahir, his jaw clenching. "Now that he needs a friend more than ever to show him the error of his ways and help him grow into the man he should be, I'm supposed to pull away from him for fear of tainting myself?"

"We have a right to decide that we do not wish to be friends with beings we deem as immoral," countered King Jonathan curtly. "We are at perfect liberty to minimize our associations with those we feel are bad influences upon us."

"If we think that someone could be a bad influence upon us, doesn't it follow logically that we could be a good influence on that person, sire?" Zahir pressed. "Isn't the whole point of being good not to sit around feeling righteous, but to help others increase in virtue, too? Instead of being holier-than-thou, aren't we supposed to see a chance of redemption for even the worst people? We aren't supposed to just lounge around feeling saved from evil, are we? We're supposed to go out and save others from evil, aren't we?"

"You feel called to visit Joren?" Pensively, the king stroked his beard.

"I do, sire." Stubbornly, Zahir lifted his chin. "Joren and I must have become friends for a reason. We must have been intended to rescue one another. Joren has saved my skin once, and now I have save him, too. Then maybe we'll both be free of the mire we've been trapped in since birth."

His knightmaster scrutinized him for a long moment. Then, he slid open a drawer, removed a quill and a roll of parchment, and scribbled out a letter. When he was done writing, he thrust the scroll into Zahir's hands, saying, "Give this to the guards outside the noble holding room."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." Bowing, Zahir left King Jonathan's study, closing the door in his wake, and then strode out of the royal quarters.

As he progressed down corridors and spiraling staircases to the chamber beside the court where the noble prisoners were kept while they awaited trial, he started to ponder what he would say to his friend when they were reunited under such tense circumstances.

He had not solved this problem by the time he reached the room where Joren was being held. Proffering the scroll of parchment from the king to the pair of sentinels outside Joren's door, he muttered, feeling as awkward as if he had just grown a third leg, "King Jonathan gave this to me."

"Humph," grunted one of the sentries, his dark eyes flashing from side to side under his helmet as he perused the letter Zahir had handed to him. "You're to be allowed to see the Stone Mountain boy, then?"

His mouth as dry as desert sand, Zahir could only nod, hoping that the gesture was firm enough to persuade the guard that he really could survive a visit with Joren.

"All right," the sentinel mumbled, unbuckling a key ring from his belt and unlocking the door to Joren's holding room. "The prisoner hasn't shown himself to be violent, but you had best be alert, anyway. You never know when someone who is cooped up for kidnapping might decide to attack you. You'll have to leave all your weapons here, though. We can't be running the risk of you sneaking them to him or of him stealing them from you."

"I'm not pathetic enough to lose a fight to an unarmed man when I'm armed," argued Zahir, convinced that he would feel as naked as a newborn without his sword and dagger. Both his weapons were nothing more than extensions of his hands. To give up a weapon was to surrender a vital body part. To hand his arms over to a strange soldier was to risk being assaulted when he was vulnerable. Although he didn't suspect that Joren would assail him, he still wanted a cool metal hilt to cling to in order to steady his nerves throughout what would have to be an agonizing exchange. Without a sword and dagger, he would be nothing—or feel like he was nothing, which amounted to the same thing. "I'm a loyal servant of His Majesty's, and I would never give a weapon to one of his prisoners, either."

"I don't bend the rules for anyone," growled the sentry. "If you've complaints about that, take them up with the king, but, if you want to see Stone Mountain now, give me your weapons."

"Very well; hold onto your helmet," grumbled Zahir, reluctantly removing his sword from its scabbard and his dagger from its sheath before shoving both weapons at the burly guards. "Mind you, I expect that my weapons will be in the same pristine condition that they are now when I come out, and that neither of them will be stolen. In particular, the dagger is a special gift from His Majesty. If you think to pawn it, you might not have many years of your life to regret that decision."

"We aren't thieves," barked the sentinel who had done all the talking, roughly pushing Zahir through the door the other sentry had yanked open a second ago.

"I know you confiscate at least half of any food given to those you're guarding, and that you accept bribes," Zahir mumbled under his breath.

Then, as he looked around the room where Joren was being held, he felt as if all the air were being sucked out of his chest because some gargantuan fist had slammed into his stomach. While Beniamino had been locked in a filthy cell where the air itself had seemed fetid for the crime of fighting for his people's freedom from a tyrant, Joren was placed in a small but otherwise luxurious chamber even though he had arranged for an innocent maid to be kidnapped and tied atop Balor's Needle.

The injustice was enough to choke him, so he tried to be grateful that Joren was being treated decently as he glanced around the noble holding room. Just because Beniamino had been forced to sleep on a thin, odiferous cot on a stone floor that didn't mean Joren shouldn't have a comfortable four-poster while he awaited trial. Just because Beniamino had only moldering blankets to wrap himself in as his death drew ever nearer that didn't mean Joren shouldn't have silk linens and goose feather comforters to curl up in as his own judgment approached. Just because Beniamino had nothing to divert his attention from the gruesome fate that awaited him that didn't mean Joren shouldn't have a bookshelf jammed with (dusty and old but otherwise fine) volumes to entertain him while he was imprisoned. Just because Beniamino's surroundings had made it impossible for him to forget he was in jail that didn't mean Joren shouldn't have drapes concealing the bars on his window and ornate designs disguising the bolt on the oak door. Justice wasn't about vengeance, after all. The abuse of one person did not necessarily mandate the mistreatment of another.

"Don't just stand there gawking like a Player in a parody," commented Joren, who was sprawled across his bed. "Come join me. I could use some real conversation before I go mad from listening to all the voices in my head."

"You're back." That was all Zahir could think to say as he plopped onto his old friend's bed.

"No, I'm just a simulacrum of Joren," smirked the other lad, fiddling with a loose thread on the pillow upon which he was resting his head. "Obviously, I'm back. Did you give your brain to a peasant who needed it more? Is that why you have been reduced to stating that which is instantly apparent in any situation?"

"Now isn't the time for teasing, Joren." Tightly, Zahir pressed his lips together. "You're in a holding room awaiting trial for kidnapping a woman. Be serious. Be repentant if the charges against you are true, as I believe them to be. Be outraged at the unfairness of the situation if the allegations against you are false, as I wish they were. Just act as if you understand the gravity of an accusation of abduction. Don't treat this like it's some little raincloud that will blow over and soon be forgotten."

"For the love of Mithros, Zahir, don't be grim." Joren scowled. "I've had to listen to Sir Paxton bugging me for weeks about this. I can't even begin to describe how many times he has pestered me about how important it is for me, a future knight of the realm, to face the Crown's justice."

"In that case, you agreed to face the Crown's justice only to get your knightmaster to stop nagging you?" demanded Zahir, unable to prevent the repulsed incredulity from seeping into his tone. "Wanting to receive the some fair punishment for kidnapping an innocent woman if you were guilty or protecting your honor by proving your innocence in court had nothing to do with your choice to return to Corus?"

"That sounds about right." Languidly, Joren shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, you did forget to mention that the main reason I agreed to come to court was that I couldn't become a knight if I holed up in Stone Mountain forever."

"You want to be a knight, but you don't have a concern for protecting the innocent and the weak, is that correct?" Zahir snapped. "You desire all the glory and none of the responsibility, huh? Let me just sit here in awe of how much sense that _doesn't_ make. Believe me, after listening to some of my knightmaster's crazier theories, I can recognize claptrap when I hear it. Right now, your words are fit only to be used as fertilizer in the fields of the peasants you hate so much."

"You've become quite a good little progressive." Rolling his eyes, Joren patted Zahir's wrist patronizingly. "Now you are almost as insufferable a protector of the small as the Lump. That's a spectacular feat. I applaud you."

"Behaving honorably and respecting traditional customs such as championing the defenseless doesn't make anybody insufferable," hissed Zahir. "In fact, a person's insufferableness is directly proportional to the degree he or she spits into the faces of our ancestors by disregarding ancient traditions and values."

"I respect ancient traditions," Joren drawled. "The law that will determine how I am to be punished for having the Lump's stupid maid kidnapped is a product of the customs and morals of our ancestors—or, more properly, mine. I'm not sure that your ancestors had even mastered the written word by the time us northerners had codified our laws."

"When people have honor, they don't need laws to make them act virtuously." Haughtily, Zahir lifted his nose. "Besides, people who have memories can remember oral laws instead of toting a million books around for reference every time they have to make a judgment."

"Well, all those million books you dismissed so casually make distinctions between the noble class and the common masses," retorted Joren, bristling. "If you actually read some of the realm's laws, you'll discover that nobles who kidnap worthless maidservants only have to pay fines, and the money for those fines, of course, can easily be compensated for by raising the taxes of the insignificant, ignorant peasants who inhabit a noble's fief. A mere slap on the wrist is all a noble receives for abducting a commoner, because, naturally, nobles and commoners aren't equal."

"How can you say that?" gasped a horrified Zahir. "All people are equal—"

"Thank you for providing me with my daily serving of progressive rubbish," snapped Joren. "Of course people aren't equal. Some people are sharp as knives, while others are thick as stumps. Some beings are strong as oxen, whereas others are weak as butterflies. Some individuals are graceful as a gazelles, and others are as clumsy as turtles. Some people are nobles, and others are commoners. People are what they are born to be—worthless peasants, greedy merchants, or important leaders—and they aren't born equal. It's a great progressive lie that they are."

"Naturally, people aren't equal in ability," Zahir parried, his jaw tautening. "Men and women, for instance, are designed to fill different roles in society. However, all people are equal in dignity. All tears and drops of blood are of equal value. Nobody deserves to be abducted and held hostage on the top of Balor's Needles just to make a political point, no matter how valid. No innocent person should be scared out of their wits. Everyone should feel safe and respected for what they contribute to society. The strong should protect the weak, not abuse them. Being a noble isn't an invitation to do whatever you want, Joren. It's a call to serve."

"Don't be so provincial, Zahir." Joren's lips twisted into a condescending sneer, his nose wrinkling as though a foul smell had reached his nostrils. "Commoners exist to serve as pawns in the games of chess that nobles constantly play with one another."

"I see." Zahir's expression and voice were as hard as marble, even though he would have sold everything he owned to make the other boy not possess such misanthropic, elitist sentiments. "I forgot that the common masses in the country mainly serve as an audience of sufficient magnitude for the drama of your life. How could I be so foolish as to imagine that their lives or wellbeing could matter to you at all?"

"There is no need to worry about imaginary rights the law hasn't granted people yet," remarked Joren, examining his fingers in a way that implied he found this conversation as fascinating as most beings did advanced mathematics. "That is the very definition of putting the cart before the horse."

"At least nobody can accuse you of putting your principles before your political goals." Bitterly, Zahir bit his lip. Then, he burst out, "Can't you be sorry for kidnapping the maid because it was wrong? Why do you need the law to hammer into your head that it was a horrid thing to do to an innocent person? Don't you feel the truth in your heart? Can't you imagine how terrifying it would be to be abducted and tied up somewhere, wondering if you would ever be rescued?"

"The law is the best judge of morality," responded Joren flatly. "Everything else is a matter of opinion."

"And, of course, your opinion is better than anyone else's." Nauseated by Joren's lack of penitence and arrogant interpretation of the law, Zahir shook his head. "I wish that you would be locked in a disgusting prison for a few years. Then you could understand the horror of what you inflicted upon that poor maidservant."

Justice wasn't vengeance, he reminded himself, but it still had to be harsh enough to make a criminal repent for his misdeeds. Sometimes redemption could only be found through suffering.

"You have abandoned me, then?" asked Joren icily, arching an eyebrow at him.

"I haven't abandoned you, though my life would be infinitely easier if I had," Zahir shouted, vexed by Joren's inability to spot the truth when it was staring him in the eyes. "If I had, I wouldn't be here, would I, genius? It's a good thing you didn't attend the university with that rock for a brain of yours."

"All you want to do is lecture me," snorted Joren. "What an invaluable friend you are."

"I'm trying to save you," Zahir hissed, tears welling in his eyes. "You saved me once, and now I have to return the favor."

"I don't need to be saved." Briskly, Joren shook his head. "Now, stop nagging me. One knightmaster is more than enough for anybody."

"You need to be saved, and the fact that you can't see that only proves my point," argued Zahir, desperation pounding like blood through his body. "Also, if your knightmaster really did pester you enough, you'd be sorry about your crime. You wouldn't be all smug because you are above the law."

"I don't need to be saved," repeated Joren testily. "You're the one who has to be protected from believing any more progressive delusions."

"I can't help you if you can't even admit that you might be wrong." As he spoke, Zahir didn't know whether to be grateful to or angry at the gods for making hearts break so quietly that nobody could ever have a prayer of hearing such terrible destruction. "I just hope that something shatters your heart of stone, so that you can love as you once did when you saved my life and didn't seek any recognition for doing so."

"You're not being a very supportive friend, you know." Joren made a tsking sound with his tongue.

"I can't violate my conscience even for you, Joren." Zahir sighed. "No matter what, I'll be your friend, but I can't agree with your behavior when it's wrong. Right now, the best thing I can do is tell you just how messed up some of your actions and beliefs are. You're going down a dangerous path that will end in you destroying yourself and others. Come of it, please. It goes nowhere nice, I swear."

"It's the country that is heading toward destruction, and I'm the one trying to prevent it from falling into shambles," scoffed Joren, waving a dismissive hand. "Apparently, you've misread the road signs if you think that I'm heading in the wrong direction."

"I'll be there for you when you need me." Feeling as if his spirit had hit rock bottom and was showing signs of beginning a fruitless dig, Zahir pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the door. As he prepared to knock for the guards to open it, he tossed over his shoulder, "I just can't bear to talk to you when you keep saying things that make me wonder if I ever really knew you and when you won't open your heart to the truth."

As he knocked for the sentries and stepped out of the door they opened, he assured himself that, in time, Joren would wish to atone for kidnapping Mindelan's maid. After all, what was anyone without hope that even the most obstinately unrepentant individuals could feel remorse for their crimes and be saved from their worst enemies—themselves—in spite of themselves, not because of themselves?


	52. Chapter 52

Author's Note: I hope all Americans had a happy Independence Day. Sorry about the delay in updating, but Lioness is working as a counselor at a sleep-away camp for rich kids, and so her downtime is severely limited. (Lioness has survived Patriotic Week intact, and she is heading into Athletic Week with more than a little trepidation.)

Disclaimer: All the quotes in Joren's trial are from Tamora Pierce's book. I'm sorry to borrow so heavily from her text in this chapter, although I did try to make Zahir's experience of the trial as unique as possible. Next chapter will contain more original material, though, I assure you, so please be patient with me.

Justice for All

That night, Zahir slept like a baby, which, of course, meant that nightmares plagued him, causing him to awaken, soaked in sweat, at irregular intervals, his dry mouth longing to cry out for the mother he knew had no hope of hearing him leagues away in the desert.

Each of the nightmares involved some variation of Joren falling to a gruesome end. In one, Joren had been soaring alongside Zahir among fluffy white clouds when, suddenly, the clouds bearing Joren turned to ashes, and he plummeted down to the ground so far below.

Zahir's next dream had consisted of him and Joren hiking through a sun-dappled wood together, as they had so many times during camping trips as pages, when Joren stepped into a pit of quicksand to be swallowed entirely before Zahir could even think to move to rescue him.

After that, Zahir was dancing through aquamarine waves in the Emerald Ocean with Joren swimming beneath him like a brother. Then, Joren's feet and arms were trapped in ropes of seaweed. Before Zahir could rip the wretched seaweed off Joren, Joren had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, lost in what had to be miles of black water ending in a watery grave.

Following that horrible dream, his night culminated in the most haunting nightmare of all. This time, Zahir and Joren were locked in the battle against the spidrens with the Own and the other pages again. The whole world was in chaos, burning up in flames, and, this time, it was Joren who slipped. It was Joren who was descended upon by a spidren. It should have been Zahir who saved him, but, again, Zahir's footwork was too cursed slow, and Joren met a gory death in the spidren's pincers and ravenous maw.

Sometimes, as he neared his end, Joren would scream out Zahir's name. Other times, his mouth would open imploringly, but no sound would emerge, as if Joren had forgotten Zahir's name long ago. Sometimes Zahir would move to rescue Joren; other times he would be paralyzed by shock and terror. It never made any difference what he or Joren did. Joren always suffered a dreadful death.

As he awoke from his final nightmare, Zahir yearned to sob his heart out, since it would be less painful to lose his broken heart than to continue living with it as a constant companion. Tears pricked his eyes as he thought bitterly that it would have required a heart of stone, rather than a man's heart, to withstand the horrid realization that love alone was not sufficient for salvation.

Nothing could shatter the soul more effectively than the harsh truth that you could love somebody, but that didn't mean that you could save them from others or from themselves. Sometimes, no matter how much you tried to guide a friend onto a lighter lane, that friend would barrel over you as if you were nothing more than a pebble to be crushed beneath their shoes and dash down the dark, dangerous path they were on.

Still determined to do anything in his power to save Joren, or at least bear witness to the awful end Joren was rushing toward, Zahir shoved himself out of bed. He dressed and groomed himself. Then, his stomach pressing against his lungs in a manner that rendered it impossible to take more than shallow breaths, as if he rather than Joren would soon be on trial, he left the royal quarters and made his way down corridors and winding staircases until he arrived at the courtroom where Joren's trial was scheduled to occur.

When he entered the chamber, he saw Duke Turomot, his scowl as firmly affixed to his lips as ever, behind the magistrate's dais. Glancing around rapidly under the pretext of locating an empty seat in the droves of lords and ladies who were interested in seeing the Stone Mountain heir stand trial for kidnapping a maid, he spotted Mindelan, Mindelan's former maidservant, and Lord Raoul (whom Zahir still couldn't believe had chosen Mindelan as his squire) crammed onto the bench reserved for the wronged party.

Across the aisle from them was Joren's knightmaster. Sir Paxton of Nond looked as haggard as Zahir felt, and, for a second, he had the urge to come over to offer a sympathetic comment to the beaten man. However, remembering that many northern nobles tended to glare at him as if he were a nasty substance attached to the soles of their best dancing shoes when he approached them, he squashed the temptation. Right now, when he was weakened by a night of terrible dreams, he couldn't deal with northern snobbery and prejudice.

Instead, wishing for some reason he didn't comprehend himself to conceal himself from Lord Wyldon, Prince Roald, and Cleon, all of whom he recognized among the crowd, he slipped onto a bench behind a nobleman who was almost wider than Zahir was tall, thinking that the gentleman's bulk would hide him from view.

Staring at the nobleman and the lady next to the lord whom Zahir assumed was the gentleman's wife because it gave him something to do while he waited for the trial to start, Zahir noticed that the nobleman, most unwisely, was garbed in puce that only emphasized his pink skin, increasing his resemblance to a pig in a wig. His bony wife, whose tight corsets made her appear so frail that she was likely to be swept away by any breeze that rippled through the courtroom, only made the lord's rotundity even more comically obvious.

Before Zahir could further mentally critique the noble couple in front of him, Duke Turomot struck a bronze disk with a polished granite ball. His legs and mind numb, Zahir forced himself to rise along with everybody else in the packed chamber and mumble the prayer to Mithros, joining the appeal for the god to preside over the trial to ensure that justice was achieved, even though Zahir thought that all the voices ran together like paint. This made the intention of the prayer indistinguishable to him, and, most likely, to Mithros.

Once the prayer ended, Zahir sat back down along with the rest of the assembly. When the rustling of the ladies rearranging their skirts had subsided, Duke Turomot focused his glower on Mindelan, which Zahir thought was only fair. After all, this trouble could all have been averted if the Girl had understood that she had no business bucking tradition and attempting to become a knight. If she had only known her place, everything wouldn't be a mess right now.

"These proceedings are a matter of law, not of noble privilege," the duke informed Mindelan tersely. "Should you have challenges to issues, make them elsewhere. We—"

Duke Turomot's words were chopped off when one of the guards stationed outside the courtroom threw the doors open, announcing, "His royal majesty, King Jonathan the Fourth. Her royal majesty, Queen Thayet."

Automatically rising to genuflect along with everyone else present as the monarchs glided down the center aisle to the front of the court, Zahir scowled. It was just like the king and queen to show up when their arrival would have the most drama. Neither of them had to concern themselves with punctuality like lesser mortals did. Sovereigns could never be late; whenever they deigned to come was right on time. Rules were for subjects to abide by, not kings and queens.

His glower remained entrenched as he watched King Jonathan and Queen Thayet settle themselves on the two throne-like chairs, which were part of every northern court's furnishings that were situated on the right side of the magistrate's dais. If Zahir's rudimentary knowledge of northern legal customs was accurate, normally these seats were empty and nothing more than reminders of royal dominion.

Only when the monarchs nodded to Duke Turomot did he resume his own seat. As Zahir, along with the rest of the audience, sat down after the duke, he couldn't stop himself from wondering if he should just stand through the whole trial, saving himself all the bother of rising and sitting down every few seconds.

Now that everybody was seated again, Duke Turomot's clerk, whose desk was at the foot of the magistrate's dais, stood. To the sentries guarding the common prisoners' chamber off the side of the courtroom, he ordered, "Admit the convicted commoners."

Within a minute, the sentinels brought out two shackled men. Once the chained men were dragged into court, the clerk read from a sheet of parchment, "Let the record show that the convicted witnesses, Ivath Brand and Urfan Noll, have entered the chamber. In exchange for their testimony, their fifteen-year sentences to the mines will be reduced to ten."

As he listened to the clerk's words, Zahir clenched his fists, telling himself that, no matter how satisfying he would find wrecking the courtroom more skillfully than a rampaging hurrock, he would not do so. He would maintain control, even though the blood was roaring in his veins and pounding against his eardrums. He would remain silent, although he was aching to screech out that what he was hearing wasn't justice.

It wasn't fair, he thought as his jaw tautened, that the men who had kidnapped Mindelan's maid upon Joren's command were to be sentenced to a decade of hard labor when Joren would be let off with a mere fine that would hurt Joren less than a nose bleed.

Only a fool would believe that it was just to severely punish those who followed orders while giving a slap on the wrist to the one who issued those orders. After all, Zahir was willing to bet his favorite possessions that the convicted commoners would never had laid a finger on Mindelan's maidservant if Joren hadn't paid them to do so. It was the epitome of injustice to punish the servant for the crimes of the master. That was why Zahir was so disgusted with Joren for having Mindelan's maid abducted in the first place.

Worse still, Zahir knew that most of those sentenced to hard labor died within their first eight years of mining and clearing roads. In essence, then, the men who had kidnapped Mindelan's maidservant on Joren's orders had been sentenced to an agonizing, protracted death. What they were facing was a crueler execution than hanging, and Zahir wasn't even sure that death was a just punishment for kidnapping. Execution only seemed justified to him in cases of murder, but, then again, murderers like Giovanni Medica and Mahmud were never killed. They were always allowed to live, even though their hands were stained with the blood of countless innocents.

It wasn't fair, but King Jonathan sat back and permitted such injustices to go on all around him. The fact that this latest outrage against any standard of fairness was transpiring in a courtroom only accented exactly what a mockery of justice it was. If only Zahir could learn to look at such events as comedies rather than tragedies, he would be much happier, but he wasn't callous enough to do that. He would continue to allow his heart to be torn asunder by injustice, because, if he didn't, he would become a monster.

"Proceed, Master Hayward." Duke Turomot's crisp voice jolted Zahir out of his furious musings.

"Admit the noble prisoner," the clerk called, and the guards on duty at another side door opened it. Out sauntered Joren, wearing a smug expression that suggested he had just been appointed supreme being of the universe.

He bowed gracefully to the monarchs and Duke Turomot before sliding into the bench reserved for the accused alongside his father's steward and the advocate hired to defend him, even though the worst he faced was a fine. If anyone deserved the finest advocate money could buy, it was the commoners Joren had paid to kidnap Mindelan's maid.

"Ivath Brand and Urfan Noll, do you see the man who paid you two gold nobles to kidnap Lalasa Isran?" demanded the clerk.

Both the convicts, as Zahir had expected, pointed at Joren. The clank of their shackles as they made this gesture only called attention to the fact that Joren wasn't in chains. Arrest would never inconvenience a noble nearly as much as it would a commoner. That was the northern notion of justice.

The Stone Mountain steward got to his feet, saying, "If I may speak, my lord duke." When Duke Turomot nodded his permission, the steward went on, "I am Ebroin of Genlith, steward for his Corus properties to Lord Burchard of Stone Mountain, father of Joren of Stone Mountain. As my lord is in the north and unable to reach the palace at present, I stand in his place. With me is Master Advocate Muirgen of Sigis Hold, licensed to speak in law in Tortall, Tyra, Maren, and Galla. He will serve on Squire Joren's behalf."

"I know Master Advocate Muirgen," answered Duke Turomot, and Zahir pondered whether all magistrates perfected the art of being as verbose as possible so that nobody would ever recognize that justice was never distributed in a courtroom. "He may speak as required."

Ebrion sat, as Advocate Muirgen spread his hands, his flashing, jeweled rings drawing attention to the movement.

"Your Majesties, my lord magistrate, the testimony of convicted men in such matters is a jest," began Advocate Muirgen, already starting to spin a thousand lies to replace the one truth. Twisting the truth seemed to be an invaluable talent in legal proceedings, Zahir noted, as the taste of vinegar flooded his mouth. "They give Squire Joren's name to please the Watch interrogators: they had to offer a truly big fish to justify any change in their sentence. They—"

"Yatter on, you cake-mouthed money britches," snarled Urfan, and Zahir admired the man's courage, since the convicted commoner had spoken the words that were whirling around in Zahir's skull, begging for exit. "We know who paid us." The sentry beside him cuffed his ear, but he persisted despite the blow. "Noble or not—" A second, harder smack quieted him, which was a pity, because, out of all those who had opened their mouths since the outset of the trial, Urfan was Zahir's favorite, although that wasn't saying much given the competition.

Advocate Muirgen looked at the chained men as if they were something distasteful a cat had dragged in. "Need we include the common element?" he asked in the stuffy tone northerners employed when they wished to demonstrate how refined they were, which often made Zahir wish that such individuals had half as much class as they believed they did. True class was what Trevor had possessed. True class never flaunted itself. True class simply was. True class was gracious to everyone, snubbing no one. "They have identified Squire Joren, rightly or wrongly."

Duke Turomot nodded, and the guards escorted the shackled prisoners from the room.

"No evidence connects Squire Joren to this tawdry affair," blustered Advocate Muirgen, and Zahir wondered if the advocate believed that the magistrate's brain was made with enough dung to swallow such a falsehood.

Duke Turomot raised a leather envelope that dripped with wax seals on ribbons, which contained a letter Joren had written to the men hired to kidnap Mindelan's maid.

"I object to the use of law court mages to determine the truth of Squire Joren's testimony," Advocate Muirgen rapped out, and Zahir sneered, thinking how in the space of one breath the man had gone from denying that there was any evidence linking Joren to the abduction of Mindelan's maid to arguing that said evidence was not worthy of the court's consideration. Doubtlessly, the court would soon be treated to a lengthy speech amounting to the very revealing contention that nobody had proved Joren guilty yet. "They would not practice inquiry magic if they were fit to make a decent living—"

Before Advocate Muirgen could go on arguing Joren's innocence by smearing everybody else, Joren cut in.

"Oh, stop this currish babble," he snapped, his cold, clear voice making it obvious that he found his own trial as riveting as a deaf man did an opera. Gazing at Joren with his mouth agog, Zahir thought that his yearmates might have accused him of arrogance, but Joren was a hundred times more complacent than he was. In a thousand years, he would never have the gumption to believe that he was above the law. Even if he couldn't be punished for breaking it, he would still adhere to it, because that was the honorable thing to do, and without honor, his life was meaningless. If only he could get Joren to understand that basic concept, his heart would stop feeling like it was in the ground. "Ebroin and Muirgen have talked at me for days. I'm weary of it."

Glancing boldly up at the duke, Joren stated, "I paid those idiots to steal a wench and stash her on Balor's Needle. I paid a—"

Zahir inwardly applauded his friend for being the only person apart from Urfan to speak the truth since the court had come to order. That fierce courage, wild disregard for the consequences of his behavior, and pride in his actions was so characteristic of the Joren that Zahir had met all those years ago when they had both started out training as pages that he felt hope surge through him. The Joren that he had known for all those years still existed and could still be saved. That pride could somehow be persuaded to see that it had been dishonorable, and that bravery would provide Joren with the strength he would need to repent for his crime. The inherent goodness in him could yet outweigh the bad. Joren might have been perched on the cusp of a precarious ridge, but he didn't have to topple off it head over heels; he could still be convinced to step away from the destruction that awaited him if he moved forward.

Clearly, Advocate Muirgen and the Stone Mountain steward felt differently, for they both darted to Joren, Ebroin of Genlith saying in a rush, "Squire, Master Joren, I beg you, not another _word_. Think of your family, the smirch to your honor. There are ways to handle—"

Frowning, Zahir observed mentally that Ebroin must be as thick-headed as Vinson, because honor could not be preserved by lying to cover a crime. Honor could only be preserved by confessing to a crime and making restitution for it. Honorable people never lied to maintain their good name; they relied upon their actions to do so.

"For a man who comes from a great family, you talk like a merchant," scoffed Joren, shaking off Ebroin's restraining hand. "My _honor_? What honor has a nation when a female lives among men and pretends to their profession of arms? What honor is there in forcing a good, brave knight like Wyldon of Cavall, a hero of the realm, to accept this creature into training and allow her to continue?"

His stomach sinking to join his heart in the ground, Zahir thought that the trial, in Joren's perspective, was nothing more than an opportunity to shout out his opinions to a courtroom jammed with nobles.

"I was not forced, Joren," Lord Wyldon declared, as Zahir noted inwardly that it was immensely improbable that Wyldon of Cavall had ever been forced to do anything. Lord Wyldon did not give off the impression of one who was easily bullied. In fact, he probably had been shouting out orders the second he was born. "She earned her right to stay as much as—more than—you lads against odds that might have broken one of you."

"I understand that you are honor bound to say so, my lord," Joren remarked quietly, even though he had to know as well as Zahir did that it would just about kill Lord Wyldon to lie. "The conclusions I draw are my own."

Joren spat on the flagstones before Mindelan and then faced Duke Turomot once again. "I had her coming and going," he commented, the pride he took in stating this making it plain that he felt nothing but admiration for his own genius. "Either she failed in her duty to serve her servant—and I'd have made sure the world knew the wonderful Keladry had shirked her first obligation as a noble—or she'd be so late that she'd have to repeat the whole four years. No one would do that."

Apparently deciding that now was a glorious opportunity to accuse the chief magistrate in the realm of accepting royal bribes, Joren went on, "My lord duke, you and the other examiners made allowance for her, because certain interests in this kingdom mean her to succeed. You allowed her to take the big examinations alone. Of course, she passed." Joren paused long enough to cross his arms over his chest defiantly, as though he were the lone, valiant survivor of a bloody battle. "So, I paid those men. I give you leave to sentence me under the law."

As Zahir thought that Joren's choice to insult the man passing judgment upon him just before requesting that his sentence be passed highlighted just how much contempt Joren held the law in, Duke Turomot leaned forward, looking like a dragon about to breathe a particularly large ball of fire.

"You are fortunate that, by law, a magistrate may not challenge for insult, Joren of Stone Mountain." The duke's tone was sharp enough to cut wood. "I submit you knew that much before you found the courage to say such things of me and my examiners, but Mithros waits in judgment, you arrogant puppy. You may twist our law to suit you, but he weighs your every act and will find you wanting."

Breathing heavily, the magistrate sat back in his chair and gripped his gavel with his gavel with his gnarled fingers. "With regard to your actions, the law is specific. According to _The Laws of Tortall_, section five, chapter twelve, paragraph two, in the matter of one noble's interference with the body servant of another noble: the offending noble must pay recompense for the loss of the servant for that period of time, in addition to the time which other servants spend in attempting to help or find the servant thus interfered with; the expense of any care of the servant following the interference; all expenses incurred by the noble with regard to court prosecution; and those costs incurred to bring said noble to court. I therefore fine Stone Mountain one hundred gold crowns, fifty of which are to be paid to Squire Keladry of Mindeland, five to the woman Lalasa Isran, and forty-five of which will be paird to this court for its expenses and those of the Watch."

"One hundred gold crowns!" gasped Ebroin of Genlith, as though a fine were a ridiculously harsh penalty for arranging the kidnap of an innocent woman. "The wench was gone not even a full day."

"Silence!" barked Duke Turomot, slamming his gavel on the brass disk. "You lost your right to speak when your master confessed! The Isran woman earns commissions as a dressmaker to ladies, including, at the time of the interference, her royal majesty. I but include due concern for those delayed commissions."

"Stop whining and get them their filthy money," snapped Joren, his disdainful reaction only confirming how little any fine impacted him. "As far as I'm concerned, this country is going to the sewer-mucking merchants."

With that, he strode out of the door by which he had entered.

For a moment, Zahir thought that Duke Turomot, who was rapidly turning the color of an overripe blueberry, would dispatch a guard to drag back his impudent friend. Before the duke could do so, however, Sir Paxton, whose face was gray as clay, got to his feet, stuttering apologetically, "Your Majesties, your grace, Squire Keladry, I beg your pardon for my squire's behavior. I did not know about his crime. Had I known he would act in this fashion, I would have gagged him myself."

Personally, Zahir thought that it still wasn't too late for that approach. If fines didn't make Joren understand how wrong he was, maybe being tied up would. Sometimes only experience could teach important lessons. In the interest of protecting his own skin, Zahir generally opposed violence against stubborn squires, but desperate times sometimes called for desperate measures.

"No noble is responsible for the utterances of other nobles in court, unless there is proof that they are cohorts in the endeavor under study," answered Duke Turomot, holding up a skeletal palm that still trembled with suppressed wrath. "You are a knight of good repute and standing with the Crown, Paxton of Nond. It is known that you persuaded your squire to face this court. No one believes you had knowledge of Squire Joren's behavior. I would suggest, however, that you use the time remaining of his service to school him in humility."

With a bow to the monarchs and the magistrate, Sir Paxton departed through the main door, as the duke directed his attention to Ebroin of Genlith, inquiring, "Your dispositions, sir?"

Ebroin, who had been engaged in an animated discussion with Advocate Muirgen, looked up to respond, "If it please the court, I require three days to raise so great a sum."

"You have until sunset of the first night of Midwinter," barked Duke Turomot. "Each half-day you are late, a third of the sum will be added as penalty, subject to the same division of as the original sum."

"A third!" cried Ebroin, but he bowed his head and decided not to protest any further when the duke glowered at him. "Very well, my lord duke."

At this point, Mindelan stood. "My lord, I would like a question answered, please."

The duke, much to Zahir's satisfaction, transferred his glare to Mindelan. "Speak, Squire Keladry of Mindelan."

"Did I hear right?" Kel asked in a tone of forced composure. "Joren had Lalasa kidnapped, roped, gagged, blindfolded, and dragged here and there in the dark. Then she was left on an open platform where she could have rolled into the opening to the stair and fallen to her death, and all he gets is a _fine_? For the inconvenience?"

Looking at the girl he had always deemed as insufferably self-righteous, Zahir found that, for once, he agreed with her. A fine wasn't a fair penalty for arranging for a woman to be kidnapped. It seemed like both he and Mindelan had been idealistic imbeciles to think that justice could be found in the courts and that the realm's laws could protect anyone.

"That is the law," replied the duke tightly, so that Mindelan would understand just how much he did not appreciate her questioning him or his precious legal codes. "A maidservant belongs to her mistress. Squire Joren deprived you of her services—I understand she worked at that time on a gown for her majesty—" he glanced at the queen, who inclined her head in confirmation—"and caused disruption to her work later as a result of disordered nerves. I remind you the woman was also granted firve gold crowns in my judgment."

Here, Mindelan's maidservant tugged anxiously on her sleeve. After hissing something to her maid, Mindelan told Duke Turomot, "If he'd kidnapped me, he'd have gotten prison or trial by combat, but for her he tosses a few coins in our laps and goes on his way."

"Your tone borders on the insubordinate," the duke snarled, his eyes as hard and cold as glaciers. "My clerk will send you the law pertinent to cases in which nobles interfere with those of common blood under the protection of other nobles. These laws have been in our codes for centuries, squire, worked out by men far wiser than you. If you have no more questions…"

Mindelan looked like she wanted to debate the point further, but Lord Raoul and her maid managed to yank her back onto the bench as Duke Turomot concluded the trial. When the duke's gavel banging on the brass disk ended the proceedings, Zahir remained in place as the lords and ladies around him rose in a rustle of expensive fabric, because he wanted to speak with his knightmaster at the earliest possible moment. He was simmering with anger at what passed for justice in this kingdom, and he wanted King Jonathan to hear all of his thoughts on just how unfair the Tortallan legal system was sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, it seemed that he would have to wait to give the king a piece of his mind, because his knightmaster, Queen Thayet, Mindelan, and Lord Raoul were all disappearing into an office off the courtroom. Obviously, Mindelan had decided to ask King Jonathan for a private word, and, sinking further back against his bench, Zahir thought that he wasn't in the mood for a patience test right now.

Trying to relieve some of the frustration welling inside him, he tapped his feet against the floor, deriving some small measure of contentment every time his shoes thudded against the stones.

He was distracted from his assault against the floor when one of the few remaining nobles in the courtrom halted beside him. Looking up to see who would dare bother him when he was in a towering temper, he found himself gazing into Lord Wyldon's stern face.

"My lord?" he asked, taking a stab at sounding dignified, even though he really wanted to strangle all the morons who had ever contributed to Tortall's messed-up legal codes.

"You came to the trial, but you don't look like you were supporting Joren," remarked Lord Wyldon, his tone wearier than Zahir could ever have imagined it could be.

"Despite everything that happened, Joren is still my friend, sir." Bleakly, Zahir shrugged. "I had to come to his trial, even though I despise everything he did that led up to this travesty of justice."

"Naturally." The expression in Lord Wyldon's expression was oddly distant, as if he were remembering something that brought him nothing but melancholy. "From the start of your training, you and Joren stood out like gems in a dung pile. You both were so strong, quick, and agile. I thought you two would be among the best knights that I ever trained. I imagined that I could mould you both into the sort of brave, noble knights the realm needs so much. I thought that I was correct to urge you two to be strong, to be aggressive, and to concentrate on the goal. Now I see that Joren took my advice to heart so much that he had no problem kidnapping a maid in order to prove a political point. You understand how wrong he was, though. That's something, at least."

Zahir pressed his lips together. Before, he hadn't hesitated to blame Wyldon as well as Lord Burchard for Joren's decision to abduct Mindelan's maid, but, now that he saw Wyldon looking so defeated, he couldn't feel any resentment toward the training master. When a giant of his childhood appeared to have abruptly transformed into a pygmy when Zahir was glancing in another direction, he couldn't feel anything except another twinge of despair that another illusion of his youth had been destroyed. It was hard to be outraged at a man who was just doing the best he could and had just admitted that he, like Zahir, could do the wrong thing even while harboring under the delusion that he was acting properly. All any of them could do was try, Zahir concluded grimly, and nobody could accuse Lord Wyldon of not trying hard enough.

"Joren can understand how wrong he was, too, my lord," Zahir insisted after a moment's awkward silence. "He is young. He has plenty of time to change."

"What with the Immortals and the tension with Scanra, you lads don't have nearly the same amount of time to be boys as I did." Dourly, Lord Wyldon shook his head. "Like you, Joren is more of a man than a boy, and, once people reach manhood, they don't change much. They might alter a handful of bad habits or modify a couple of erroneous beliefs, but their core values and behavior is set."

"I can make Joren change, sir." Zahir's chin lifted resolutely. "Joren and I were as much rivals as we were friends, so I don't want anyone thinking that he is stronger than me. I will find a way to save him from himself, even if he doesn't wish to be saved or doesn't think that he needs to be rescued."

"A person's character cannot be changed if they don't consent to its alteration," Lord Wyldon pointed out brusquely. "Boys either grow up well, or they don't. All you can do, Zahir ibn Alhaz, is strive to ensure that you continue to grow up well."

"I fear my own dark side as much as I do Joren's." Annoyed that everyone was writing Joren off as a depraved young man who could not be saved, Zahir folded his arms across his chest. "I wrestle with the same temptations that he does, my lord. I'm not any better than he is."

"You should fear your own dark side," Lord Wyldon educated him tartly. "The strongest people tend to have the mightiest dark side inside them. That is what I've been telling you. You seem to have as much a knack at misinterpreting me as your friend Joren."

Before Zahir could devise a reply to this unsettling pronouncement, Lord Wyldon departed the court room briskly, leaving Zahir alone with his thoughts, which were no better company than the training master had been, while he waited for his knightmaster to emerge from the office.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity or two, Mindelan and Lord Raoul left the office. Zahir leaned even further back on his bench as they passed, but both of them seemed too preoccupied with their own musings to spare him even a glance. Less than a second after Mindelan and her knightmaster had walked by, the king and queen stepped outside of the office, as well.

"Sire, may I talk to you for a moment?" Zahir asked, as King Jonathan and Queen Thayet followed Mindelan and Lord Raoul down the center aisle out of the court room.

"We shouldn't inconvenience others by remaining in this court room longer than necessary, Squire," his knightmaster responded. "Whatever you have to say can wait until we return to our quarters."

"I want to talk to you here and now, Your Majesty, not when and where you decide it's convenient," Zahir growled, his temper flaring. "I want to tell you exactly what I think of the serious miscarriage of justice that I witnessed in the very place where justice was supposed to be meted out, so that you won't have the nerve to act as though it didn't happen."

"If my wife and I intended to pretend that it didn't happen, we wouldn't have attended the trial in the first place, Zahir." King Jonathan's eyes were like ice as they locked on his squire. "By now, I thought that you might comprehend that just because I am king that doesn't mean that I am heartless. Since you don't, I suppose that I have to explain that the reason that my wife and I came to court today was to show that Joren's decision to kidnap Lalasa Isran mattered. We wanted Joren of Stone Mountain to feel the full brunt of our royal disapproval."

"Oh, and the good that did was so minuscule, I doubt there's a scale to measure it on," spat Zahir. "In fact, it was more harmful than helpful, sire. Your appearance here today just showed him that he doesn't have to be scared of royal ire any more than he has to fear legal consequences for having maids kidnapped. Now, in addition to his contempt for the law, he'll have contempt for the Crown. Yes, things certainly are better now that Joren realizes just how much royal approval doesn't impact him."

"Since everyone is dead-set on impressing upon me just how unintimidating I am, perhaps I will just have to lob off a few heads for people to understand that they cross me at their own peril," observed his knightmaster sardonically. "Maybe I'll start by decapitating you, so that everybody sees that I am above such humane impulses as saving my impudent squire's neck."

"There's a hollow threat if I ever heard one, Your Majesty." Utterly unfazed, Zahir snorted. "As you want me to become Voice after you, I am more useful to you alive than dead. That prevents me from being beheaded at your command at the very least."

"You are as adorable as ever, Zahir ibn Alhaz," King Jonathan remarked, all dryness.

"I am a Bazhir warrior." Zahir rolled his eyes. "I aim for fearsome, rather than adorable, sire."

"And what cause are you fighting for currently, Squire?" His knightmaster arched an eyebrow.

"Justice for all, as always, Your Majesty." His temper flaring since he suspected that the king wasn't taking him seriously, Zahir gritted his teeth. "What happened in this courtroom today was a mockery of the idea of justice. A fine isn't a fair punishment for arranging the abduction of an innocent woman, and it's not acceptable that Joren should only have to pay a fine just because he's a noble while the commoners he hired, who would never have touched a hair on the maid's head if Joren hadn't ordered them to, are sentenced to a decade of hard labor. Almost nobody survives more than eight years of hard labor. Basically, the men who did Joren's dirty work have been sentenced to death. I'm not even certain that kidnapping should be a capital offense, since it doesn't seem fair to take someone's life when they didn't kill anyone, but if abducting somebody really does warrant execution, be merciful and hang them. Give them a swift death rather than a long, painful one. After all, justice isn't vengeance."

"The courtroom, Zahir, is a place where legal disputes are resolved, not where justice is always accomplished, as I explained to you before," the king reminded him crisply. "Joren and the convicted commoners were all punished according to the law of the land. If those who are in charge of enforcing the law of the land break it upon their whim, none of us will be safe."

"Laws should reflect justice." Zahir's hands balled into fists as his teeth ground together ever more loudly. "Tortall's don't. That's a bit of a problem from where I'm standing, sire."

"I see you have as much contempt for the law as Joren of Stone Mountain does." King Jonathan shook his head. "Squire, I don't know how you plan to serve this realm as a knight when you don't respect the law of the land even when you don't agree with it."

"I don't have contempt for the law, Your Majesty," retorted Zahir, resisting the temptation to stamp his foot to emphasize his point. "I respect the law so much that I want there to be stricter penalties for disregarding it as casually as though it were nothing more than some silly ought-to suggestions. I love it so much that I want to elevate it so that it really is justice. I want there to be one set of rules for everyone—not separate ones for nobles and commoners, so that nobles can abuse commoners without compunction and commoners can't even look to the courts to protect t the rights that should be theirs. I want the courts to be the one place in the realm where all people can be treated equally, and everybody has a chance to be heard even if they are the village idiot whom no one would ever listen to under any other circumstances. You can call me contemptuous of the law, but I don't think I could esteem it more if I were a magistrate."

"In short, you want what Keladry of Mindelan asked from me." Pensively, the king stroked his beard.

"I suppose that the odds dictate that even someone as stupid as Mindelan can be right once in a blue moon just like a broken clock can be correct twice a day," Zahir commented coldly. "I'll start caring about her opinion when she returns to her home and takes up a proper pursuit like embroidery."

"Perhaps I'll begin taking your opinion with less of a grain of salt when you stop calling for justice in one breath and diminishing the role of women in one breath—"His knightmaster began, but Zahir interjected.

"What you see as diminishing, I see as acknowledging and elevating," mumbled Zahir mutinously. "I certainly couldn't embroider. I'll never understand why some women want to neglect their natural talents in favor of men's. It seems to me that women like that spit on the role of women, not me."

"You maintain good relations with your sister even though she is a Rider," King Jonathan said. "I don't understand why you are so intolerant of Keladry."

"She's insufferably sanctimonious," grunted Zahir.

"People could say the same about you, Squire." The king's lips quirked. "You know, we sometimes hate those who are too much like us because when we look at them, we see a mirror that displays all our flaws in sharp relief."

"Perhaps you dislike Joren because you're similar to him, Your Majesty," snapped Zahir, affronted at being compared to the Lump.

"Maybe." His knightmaster's voice and eyes were infuriatingly level. "Anyway, I shall tell you what I told Keladry of Mindelan. I shall do what I can to change the law dictating the penalty for nobles kidnapping common servants, and other laws like it. However, you must understand that laws are not altered in the blink of an eye at the word of a king or queen. My wife and I must balance opposing forces whenever we propose any change, and that takes time."

"This isn't about change," muttered Zahir, his mouth stiffening. "This is about maintaining traditional ethics in a world where an appalling number of people seem to have no morals whatsoever."

"Well, maintaining traditional ethics in a world where an appalling number of people seem to have no morals whatsoever will still take time." King Jonathan smiled slightly. "I recommend that you be patient, and remember that patience exists to be tested."

"Patience isn't my strong suit, Your Majesty," grumbled Zahir, wondering how a supposedly progressive king couldn't achieve change the one time his squire wished for it.

"All the more reason for you to work on it." His knightmaster's azure eyes were definitely twinkling with amusement now.

"No, all the more reason you should look to others for patience," Zahir countered, wrinkling his nose. "Look to me for displays of outraged indignation, not patience, sire."


	53. Chapter 53

Discipline and Vision

The night following Joren's trial, Zahir was again besieged by a series of nightmares. First, he dreamed that he was watching the two men who had been convicted of kidnapping Mindelan's maid sweating blood as they strained to build the realm's roads. He heard their moans and cries. He felt their regret at ever agreeing to break the kingdom's laws in order to feed their wives and children. He felt their worry that their families would starve in every beat of their hearts. He heard their overseer shout at them to move faster, and he felt whips slice into the flesh on their backs when their progress still failed to please their overseer.

With a mute cry, he jerked awake. After staring into the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, he drifted into another uneasy sleep. This time, he watched as Joren again abducted an innocent girl to illustrate some political point. He tried to intervene to save the girl, but Joren, smirking, yanked the lass out of his reach. His desperation reaching a fever pitch, he screamed for Joren to stop, but Joren only laughed loudly and continued down a path so dark that Zahir had no hope of finding him upon it….

The blackness of his dream abruptly transformed into a blinding, blazing brightness that reminded him of the desert. Somehow, even though he remained asleep, he felt his awareness increasing. Although he knew it was nothing but a dream, he understood that it contained all the truth of a vision.

_It was centuries ago—but it was also the eternal now that Zahir slid into every time he communed with the Voice—and Zahir wasn't himself. Instead, he was the first Voice. The gods had revealed to him so much wisdom, and now it was his duty as well as his delight to share the knowledge he had been given with his people. _

_He was sitting outside his tent on a rug with rich, swirling designs. As he ate juicy dates from an elaborately painted clay bowl, he admired the cloudless cerulean desert sky. He had only just finished mentally thanking the gods for the gift of this glorious day when a small tornado of sand kicked up by sandals announced that he had visitors. _

_Glancing down from the beautiful dome of sky above his head, he saw a burly man and a heavyset woman tugging a boy whose thick build suggested he was their son over to the first Voice, whose body Zahir was inhabiting._

_All three of the approaching figures appeared to be crimson-cheeked with a combination of exhaustion and ire. The mother was panting, the father bellowing incoherent syllables, and the son attempting to twist out of his parents' clutches. _

"_Prophet," grunted the man, as he and his wife succeeded in dragging their struggling son over to Zahir. "My wife and I have a problem with our son." _

"_Yes?" The first Voice, who was Zahir, frowned, as the son kicked out at his parents' ankles. _

"_The wretched boy—" Here, the livid father paused long enough to push the son to his knees on the rough sand—"refuses to say his prayers. My wife and I have taught all our children to pray in the manner you instructed us, but this boy won't do it even though he knows how. He doesn't obey us, and our other children are starting to refuse to say prayers, too. He is the oldest, and our other children look up to him." _

"_Do not become angry and furious," the first Voice advised in a mild voice, his words ringing in Zahir's consciousness. "The strong one is not the one who overcomes people by strength, but the strong one is the one who controls himself while in anger." _

_Then, turning to the son, he pronounced in the same soft tone, "The son who does not obey, honor, and love the parents he can see and touch cannot obey, honor, and love the gods that he cannot see and touch." _

"_I don't want to say any prayers to make anyone else—even my parents—happy," snapped the boy, lifting his chin defiantly. _

"_It's not about pleasing your parents," the first Voice replied with more firmness than gentleness now. "It's about keeping your soul in good condition. Do you really think that, at your young age, you have a better understanding of how to preserve your soul than your parents do?" _

"_Seeing as it's my soul we're discussing, I can't think of anyone more qualified to pass judgment upon it," snarled the boy. _

_Zahir felt the first Voice's eyes narrow as he studied the lad, and, somehow, he knew the first Voice's thoughts as though they were being sent directly into his skull. He knew that the first Voice was determining that the rebellious boy was about ten. He knew that, in the Voice's mind, the boy had reached puberty and the age of reason. This, in turn, meant that the boy would be held fully accountable for his actions when he was brought before Mithros for his final judgment. The boy, as far as the first Voice was concerned, needed discipline in order to save his soul. _

_Turning his attention to the father, the first Voice announced, "Order your children to pray at age seven and beat them if they neglect it at the age of ten." _

_At these words, a perverse glee spread like a lethal disease over the father's face, replacing the seething expression that had dominated the man's features previously. Obviously, the father was eagerly anticipating thrashing his son with a rod until he was black and blue. _

_Zahir felt a tidal wave of revulsion wash through the first Voice. Again, the first Voice's thoughts were as clear as daylight to him, and he knew that the Voice hadn't been saying that the man should beat his son until blood streamed from the boy's back. _

_The first Voice had been thinking that the discipline he referred to should only be as harsh as necessary to discourage the boy from repeating his disobedient and impious behavior. When it came down to it, the first Voice had been imagining a few firm taps on the arm or the bottom to redirect the recalcitrant child back to the path of virtue, akin to a shepherd guiding a sheep who had strayed dangerously far from the herd safely back to the flock with a couple of prods from a rod. In short, the first Voice had pictured a scene of loving discipline intended to reflect the justice and mercy of the gods, not one of abuse that demonstrated the brutality and vindictiveness of humanity. _

"_Don't hit your child harder than necessary," the first Voice added sternly, but Zahir knew that the first Voice comprehended that the damage had already been done. The man, incensed by his son's obstinacy, would only hear the words advising him to beat his son and wouldn't listen to the more important ones about what the first Voice really had meant by using the term beat. "Never strike your child in the face or break a bone in your child's body. Discipline your child out of love. Do not seek vengeance against your child when you punish him. Be as patient as possible with your child. Remember that where tolerance is, nothing is lacking, and where tolerance is missing, everything is deficient." _

"_Of course, Prophet." The man bowed, but Zahir could see as plainly as the first Voice could when the man dragged his son away that the man hadn't paid attention to the Voice's stipulations. _

_As the father, mother, and son disappeared in another haze of sand, Zahir again found that the first Voice's thoughts were trickling through him like blood. He knew, as well as if he were thinking it himself, that the first Voice was noting inwardly that if the man could not learn how to treat children from witnessing how the first Voice behaved toward Fatima, his beloved daughter, and Ali, his much loved nephew, then the man certainly wouldn't learn from his words. _

_Words were hollow compared to actions. The tenderness and firmness that he always guided his daughter and nephew with should have been enough of an example of the benevolent authority a father should wield over his offspring for any tyrannical father, just as the respect and devotion that Fatima and Ali displayed toward him should have been model enough of proper filial obedience for any wayward son or daughter. _

_Only those who didn't wish to see would be blind to his actions, and only those who had no desire to truly hear would not listen to his words. Everyone else would understand that discipline was about helping another become more moral, not about attaining some sort of petty vengeance. Discipline was always about justice, mercy, and love, and never about hatred, anger, or frustration. _

As abruptly as he had been swept into the first Voice's thoughts, Zahir found himself thrust from them. Breathing heavily, he sat up in bed. Reflexively, his hands closed around the prayer beads Cait had given him and the rock his knightmaster had presented to him, which were both laying beside each other on his nightstand. To his horror, he discovered that both of them were as hot as coals.

Yelping in pain like a wounded puppy, Zahir dropped the prayer beads and stone. Before he could even consider what to do next, a rap sounded on his door, and he heard his knightmaster's voice ask through the crack through which a sliver of light shone, "Zahir?"

"Come in, sire," Zahir called, too rattled to be embarrassed about crying out in the middle of the night like a toddler.

"I felt a disturbance in our bond and heard you yelp," the king commented, as he entered the bedroom, lit a candle on Zahir's nightstand, and took a seat on his squire's bed. "What's wrong, Zahir?"

"Nothing you can help me deal with," muttered Zahir, burying his forehead in his palms. "I've got to handle my nightmares by myself, sire."

"It sounded like you were facing more than nightmares in here, Squire," remarked King Jonathan dryly.

"I've received a vision," whispered Zahir so faintly that his knightmaster had to lean forward in order to hear him. "I was having regular nightmares about today's trial when suddenly I was in the first Voice's head. I knew exactly what he was thinking just as I would if I had gotten a memory from you. I was inside him when a couple approached him seeking guidance about how to deal with a son who refused to pray. The father complained that the son was setting a bad example for the couple's other children, and the first Voice told him not to be angry. Then, he advised the son that child who doesn't obey, honor, or love his parents whom he sees and hears can't possibly obey, honor, or love the gods whom he can't see or hear. The son was defiant, though. He hardened his heart and said that he wouldn't pray to please anyone, even his own parents. The first Voice informed him that praying wasn't about making the parents happy but rather about keeping the boy's soul in good condition, and that, at his young age, the boy couldn't know what was best for his spiritual well-being. The boy retorted that he knew better than anyone else what was best for his soul, so the first Voice turned to the boy's father, telling the man that children should be ordered to pray at age seven and beaten for neglecting to do so at age ten—"

At this point, Zahir, whose jaw had been trembling throughout his explanation, found that it was shaking too hard for him to carry on. Miserably, he shook his head to indicate that he might never be capable of speaking again.

"A difficult command," murmured the king, squeezing his shoulder. "It must have been hard for you to hear—"

"That wasn't the nasty part, Your Majesty." Zahir let out a bitter laugh that was more about releasing the agony inside him than expressing any amusement he might feel about living in a world of brutes who would grasp at any words that might justify abusing their own family. "The worst part was that I knew that the first Voice wasn't using the word beat to mean thrashing a child with a rod like the man in the vision was planning on doing with his son—and like my father did to me. The first Voice was imagining a few firm taps on the arm or bottom, and that's it. I even heard him tell the father not to hit the son harder than necessary, and to discipline the child out of love, not punish the son out of vengeance, but the father didn't bother with trying to understand that. He just wanted to hear a few words that would provide him with an excuse to beat his son to a bloody pulp. He wished to use piety as a cover for his own depravity. If that isn't sickening, no one would ever need to vomit."

"Some people such pre-conceived notions that they will only hear what they wish and disregard the rest." Grimly, King Jonathan sighed. "Often, they don't have a problem throwing out the main message of a lesson in favor of one sentence that they like to interpret out of context. Such beings would probably attempt to cram themselves into shakers if they were instructed to be salt for the earth. However, the gods will not be mocked. In fact, it is probably those who do evil in the name of the gods who will be most harshly punished upon their death. "

"It's not even not seeing the forest for all the trees; it's not even noticing that there is a wood at all because of the many leaves." Zahir snorted. Then, a thought struck him, and, cocking his head, he pointed out, "At the risk of sounding rude, sire, you did say that the first Voice's command was a difficult one. If you received the same memory that I did, why would you think that?"

"Ah, I was wondering when that question would come up." The king shot Zahir an appraising look before revealing in a hushed tone, "The truth is, Squire, that I didn't receive the memory that you did. The gods chose to give you that vision for a reason."

"That's why the prayer beads Cait gave me and the rock you presented me with were burning," gasped Zahir, his mouth gaping. "Why would the gods decide to give me a vision that they didn't to you, Your Majesty?"

"You must be meant to do something that I am not as a result of receiving this memory," explained his knightmaster, whose forehead had knotted. "The gods don't give out visions as though they were candy. Whenever the gods reveal something to a being, they expect the person to act upon that revelation."

"What in the world am I supposed to do anyway, sire?" demanded Zahir. "I'm just a stupid teenager, and not even a particularly kind or noble one at that."

"Now that's not true," King Jonathan countered sharply. "You are honorable, brave, devoted to justice, and compassionate no matter how much trouble you go to in a futile effort to conceal that fact. Furthermore, you are not an idiot—headstrong and impulsive, yes, but not stupid. As to what you are intended to do, that is something that you must use your brain and heart to figure out for yourself. Nobody can tell you what the gods are calling you to do just as no one can possibly fill the role that the gods plan for you to play."

"I don't see what a squire could do that a king couldn't, Your Majesty." Zahir rolled his eyes with an almost derisive dubiousness.

"You'll know when you need to," his knightmaster informed him, patting his knee. "Every generation the gods pick a few special people to change the world. Whenever the gods first communicate with anyone, that being is inevitably bewildered, but the person always ultimately discovers that the gods provide all the necessary strength and support for everything the individual is called to accomplish. Have no fear, Zahir ibn Alhaz, you belong to the gods, whether you realize it or not, and they will not abandon you. They will be your sword and your shield. Obviously, you have already found favor with them, and, as long as you continue to do their will, the special affection that they have for you will only grow."

"Yes, sire." Zahir nodded dutifully, wondering what he could achieve that the king could not. His mind settled on Joren, as it had so many times since he had initially heard that his oldest friend among the northerners had arranged the abduction of Mindelan's maid, and comprehension dawned like a stunning spring day after a long, cold frost. Urgently, the syllables tripping over one another, he asked, "May I visit Joren tomorrow morning?"

"I'm not certain that would be a prudent decision." The king frowned. "Associating with a convicted kidnapper jeopardizes your career and your soul."

"You're just worried about what the gossips will say if they hear that your squire was in contact with a convicted kidnapper that plainly wished to see punished more harshly than he was," retorted Zahir. "Certainly, you aren't concerned about how it may tear my soul apart to abandon a friend to his own dark side. It also doesn't seem to matter that the gods clearly sent me this vision to tell me just how in need of appropriate discipline to save his soul Joren is."

"Visions are tricky things, Squire." Exhaling gustily, King Jonathan shook his head. "They do not interpret themselves, and, all too often, our understanding of them can be muddied if we allow our emotions to impact our reading of them. Our feelings never lie to us per say, but they can skew our perceptions more effectively than most falsehoods."

"You said that I had to determine for myself what the gods were calling me to do when they gave me the vision," argued Zahir, scowling. "That's what I just did. Either you trust my judgment or you don't, sire. Which is it?"

"I trust your judgment, Zahir," replied his knightmaster after a lengthy hesitation. "You may visit Joren first thing tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." Zahir's words were more tinged with satisfaction at so swiftly winning an argument with the resolute king than with gratitude.

Plainly detecting his smugness, King Jonathan ordered tersely, "Back to sleep now, Squire. You should be well-rested for the last visit I will permit you to have with Joren of Stone Mountain until you have grey hair."

Before Zahir could protest how unfair it was for the king to restrict his interaction with Joren so much, his knightmaster had shut the door. Recognizing that it would be pointlessly to debate the finer points of his argument with a door, he sank against his pillows once more and burrowed under his blankets.

This time, when he drifted off to sleep, he was tormented by no more nightmares. Consequently, he was relatively well-rested when he rose shortly after daybreak the next morning. After dressing and grooming himself at top speed, he raced out of his bedchambers and out of the royal quarters. Not slowing his pace, he hurried down several twisting passageways and staircases until he arrived outside Joren's room.

When he knocked on Joren's door, his friend's called languidly, "Come in, whoever you are."

Obediently, Zahir opened the door and stepped into Joren's chamber.

"Oh, it's you, Zahir," remarked Joren vaguely by way of greeting, as he glanced up from a book on Carthaki tactics he was reading. With an indolent gesture toward his desk chair, he added, "Make yourself at home. Truth be told, I'm glad to have you. I've been out of my mind with boredom, you know. Sir Paxton won't let me out of here. He says I need to think about what I did."

"Have you?" Zahir arched an eyebrow, although he suspected that, if Joren had truly thought about his crime, he could not act so flippant. After all, if Joren had contemplated how wrong his actions were for even an hour, he would have been overcome with remorse. He wouldn't be complaining about a mild punishment. Instead, he would be inventing ways to atone for his crime.

"Shock me, Zahir, and say something intelligent. Of course I have thought about what I did." Joren shot him a withering glare. "As any fool would spot in a moment, it required quite a bit of thought to plan a successful kidnapping."

"Some babies were dropped on their heads, but I reckon that you were bounced off a stone wall, Joren." Zahir flared up. "Don't you realize that because you put so much thought into what you did, more repentance from you is expected. What you did was calculated cruelty. It wasn't some random act of violence that you perpetuated without even thinking about it. You considered it and decided it was right. Now people want you to think about it some more, understand that it was wrong, resolve never to do anything like it again, and seek to atone for your crime."

"Everyone wishes for me to compromise my morals," snarled Joren. "They forget that I kidnapped Mindelan's maid because I, unlike you, wasn't willing to abandon my principles."

"Oh, yes, the fine principles that allow you to abduct an innocent woman are definitely worth preserving," Zahir scoffed. "Nobody should bother remaining true to the codes of honor that prohibit kidnapping people."

"I grow weary of your lectures," spat Joren. "If all you want to do is yell at me, get to the point and leave."

"I don't wish to scream at you," Zahir stated in a softer fashion. "All I want is for you to comprehend that many people, Lord Wyldon and I included, would derive much comfort from seeing you repent for kidnapping Mindelan's maidservant. It would give us great hope if you could see the error of your ways. We would all be so happy if you demonstrated that you weren't going to let what is worst in you destroy that which is best in you and forever dominate your destiny."

"You're melodramatic enough to be a Player." Idly, Joren examined his smooth fingernails. "Well, I can join in the show." His mouth contorting in a rather ugly smirk, he theatrically placed a hand upon his chest, as though he had just sustained a mortal wound. "It is too late for me, my friend."

"It's not too late for you," hissed Zahir, tired of hearing this from everyone he spoke to about Joren. "While there is life, there is hope. Every choice is a fork in the road. No matter how terrible the path you are on now is, you can always decide to leave it. One right choice really can be enough to change your entire existence. Choose and start again, Joren."

Leaning forward, his face flushed with zeal, Zahir went on, "I'll never forget how you saved my life when I slipped during the battle against the spidrens when we were pages. The boy you were was willing to risk his own life, not for glory, but to save a friend's neck. That boy lives inside you. I can see that. After all these years and across all the miles we have traveled, the little Joren still calls to me. He yearns to fly toward the light like iron drawn toward a magnet. Despite all that you have done to ruin yourself and others, he still screams to be released. Let him out, Joren. I swear you won't regret it."

"Your eyes fail you." Joren continued to stare at his fingertips. "There is nothing beneath my surface, and I haven't changed since I was a boy. It is only you who have abandoned yourself, not me."

"Very well." Pressing his lips together, Zahir turned to go, shooting over his shoulder, "I'll leave you with one last thought, even though I'm not sure you have anywhere to put it. Anyway, you know, among the Bazhir, it is common knowledge that a simple desert flower will bend itself in order to grow toward the light. Shall a small desert flower be able to achieve that which the mighty Joren of Stone Mountain can't?"

"You said you were going, so get lost already," growled Joren, his pale cheeks tinged scarlet.

"I'm going." Zahir riveted his dark eyes upon the other young man. "Before I leave, though, I want to tell you a secret."

"What secret would that be?" jeered Joren.

"That just as I carry around a darkness inside of me, you bear a light inside you, as you did when you saved my life." A quiet passion pervaded Zahir's manner now. "No matter what you do, that light will still exist as long as I remember it, so why don't you stop trying to put it out?"

"Keep talking about light, and I'll find a way to set you on fire." Joren rolled his eyes. "Run along now. You don't want your progressive knightmaster to worry about the amount of time you spend with conservatives, after all. It would be horrid if you gave the king any cause to doubt that you were anything but his stooge."

"I'd rather be a stooge than a kidnapper," Zahir volleyed back, finally exiting the room and slamming the door in his wake for good measure. Although he would not abandon the boy that he had known as a page, that didn't mean he couldn't lose his patience with the unrepentant criminal who had taken that promising boy's place.

The blood still throbbing in his veins in response to Joren's final insult, Zahir marched down the hallway. However, he had barely moved several paces before a weary voice called out to him, "Joren wasn't suppose to have any visitors."

Pivoting to face Sir Paxton, who was standing in the doorway next to Joren's, Zahir bowed. "I apologize, sir. I didn't know he wasn't allowed visitors. He just told me he was supposed to stay in his room and think about what he had done, but he didn't mention that he wasn't permitted guests." Aware of how flimsy his explanation sounded, he added with a trace of defensiveness, "King Jonathan gave me permission to come here."

"Well, the king certainly outranks me." Sir Paxton's anxious, exhausted expression made a valiant attempt at twisting into what must have been a very agonizing grin. The forced smile fading almost as rapidly as it appeared, he observed, "You look as angry and as impatient with Joren as I feel. Apart from me, you are the only person who has bothered with trying to get him to appreciate how gravely wrong he was to kidnap that poor maid. His parents are proud of him. His other friends and many other conservatives have stopped by to congratulate him, while those progressives who are disgusted with his actions don't see any reason to take the time to get him to understand the horrible nature of what he did, so that he never commits a similar crime. You are a very loyal friend to try to rehabilitate an old friend who has done something so repugnant. Know that even if Joren isn't ready to appreciate you for standing by him and trying to make him into the person he should be, I admire you for what you are doing."

"What I'm doing isn't working, sir." Dourly, Zahir shook his head. "You don't need to thank me for doing something that is having no effect whatsoever."

"Nothing I'm doing is working either," muttered Sir Paxton, his face sliding into an expression of bleak defeat. "I can talk to Joren until my voice is hoarse, but he won't listen to a word. I can say he is wrong until I am blue in the face, but he remains confident that he is right. I can punish him, but he just shrugs it off."

"Your suggestion at court about tying and gagging Joren had some merit to it," commented Zahir, his mouth tightening grimly.

"I can't use force against him to prove that might doesn't make right, as he seems to think it does." Sir Paxton sighed. "It's all the violence you boys are raised with that taught him that might makes right in the first place."

"I would say that, to be effective, a punishment must sting but not injure, sir." Zahir bit his lip, and then burst out earnestly, "Just please make Joren repent for what he did. I can't continue to watch him destroy his own potential. It sickens me whenever I see the promise that used to constantly blaze in his eyes replaced more and more often with a cold cruelty."

"If I could make him repent, I would," Sir Paxton answered in a voice barely above a whisper.

After that, they, abruptly, had nothing more to say to each other. With a final bow, Zahir spun on his heel and strode down the corridor back toward the royal quarters.


	54. Chapter 54

Winter Joys and Sacrifices

Zahir was so swept up in the emotional turmoil that Joren's trial entailed that, before he was aware of what was happening, the golden, bronze, russet, orange, yellow, and crimson leaves of autumn had fallen from their trees, so that the abandoned, barren tree limbs stretched toward the pewter sky like the imploring arms of emaciated corpses after the sacking of an opulent city.

The air outside became steadily chillier, and the palace draftier. As a result, Zahir was immensely grateful for the roaring fires blazing in the hearths throughout the royal quarters. Every morning, as December's frigidity overtook the milder cold of November, a frost coated the windows and the grounds. Then, a week into December, the castle awoke after a dark, freezing night to find its turrets dripping with icicles, its practice courts blanketed with snow, and the stone paths crisscrossing its grounds shimmering with a fresh, treacherous layer of ice. 

Following that first snow storm, Corus was battered with a series of blizzards. This fact delighted northerners, who were quite prone to exclaiming to one another during polite small talk about the weather that it would be lovely to have a white week for Midwinter.

Unfortunately, Zahir did not share the enthusiasm of the northerners. The icy weather made his skin break out in goosebumps, caused his teeth to shatter, and made his bones ache as though he were a tribe elder rather than a young man. As far as he was concerned, the snow might look beautiful when it first fell and had yet to be tainted by dirt or animal droppings, but it wasn't worth the biting cold, vicious winds, and slippery ice.

No wonder northerners were forced to build such hideous castles to live in, Zahir grumbled inwardly as he skidded up a stone pathway coated with black ice on his way back up to the palace from a visit to the stables to tend to Sufia on the first morning of Midwinter. Being a nomad in this sort of climate would have been impossible, given all the horrible snow and ice that had to be contended with during the winter months.

Traveling to and from the stables was an arduous journey for him, and he was in the prime of his youth. That meant that moving long distances on horseback across the realm would be practically unfathomable until spring, when the snow and ice obstructing the roads would melt into mud, which was just a tad easier to travel through. This, in turn, meant that Zahir could safely bet that he wouldn't be receiving any letters on how his tribe was faring until springtime.

He was astonished, therefore, when, as he returned to his bedroom, his knightmaster called to him, "I have a note for you from your brother-in-law."

"You have a letter for me from Hassan, Your Majesty?" repeated Zahir, his eyes widening as he stepped into the parlor, where the king was reading a mountain of greeting cards that had been sent to him in honor of the holiday.

"That's what I said." Grinning, King Jonathan tucked a somewhat wrinkled envelope into his squire's hand. "The messenger who delivered it must have been busy enough to confuse it with a greeting card for me, as if my wife and I needed more greeting cards. We could fuel all the fires in the palace for a month with all these greeting cards, but, naturally, that would be in poor taste, so we will never do so. We will just continue to have wistful daydreams about doing so."

Utterly unconcerned about his knightmaster's greeting card woes, Zahir remarked, as he slit open the envelope containing Hassan's note, "Apparently, sire, you weren't bewildered, though, because the envelope hadn't been opened before you gave the letter to me."

"Well, I checked the address before opening." The king chuckled. "Truth be told, I'm eager for any excuse not to read all these greeting cards, which, really, are nothing more than opportunities for nobles and merchants to toady up to the Crown. Your brother-in-law's note will probably have more substance than all of these greeting cards combined."

"It would be logical if messengers could read addresses, so that they could deliver letters to the right people," muttered Zahir. "Of course, since it is sensible, Your Majesty, that is exactly why it will never be done."

"A right little ray of sunshine, you are," King Jonathan observed dryly, but Zahir, who was too preoccupied with reading Hassan's report, ignored him.

"Hassan says that the sheep slaughter went well this year, sire. As usual, several marriages took place before the slaughter, when there are plenty of rams to serve as part of dowries. Jasim ibn Noori was wed to Sairah bint Ihsan, Qani ibn Kasim married Nafla bint Jahfar, and Bashaar ibn Maqil married Khudra bint Umayr," Zahir updated his knightmaster as he scanned Hassan's letter. "Other than that, not much has changed since I left the desert."

As Zahir returned the note to the envelope, a smaller piece of parchment fell out of it. His forehead knotting in mild puzzlement, he unfolded the parchment to read in his older sister's neat, careful script:

_My dear brother,_

_I hope that this letter finds you well. I have the most wonderful news, and Hassan agrees that I should be the one to tell you it. As you know, when you last visited the desert, I was pregnant. Yesterday, I gave birth. Hassan and I are now the happy parents of a twin boy and girl. Your nephew came into the world first, bawling and crimson-faced. An hour later, his sister followed silently, and she didn't cry until Mother slapped her bottom to drive out the birth fluids clogging her lungs._

_Your niece has been named Amaya. When Hassan first suggested the name, I admit that I thought it unusual, but I have come to love the sound of it. It has a soothing, rhythmic quality like the night rain that patters against our tent after a sweltering day, and so conjures images in my mind of the blessed rain her name refers to. _

_As for your nephew, he has been named Taymur after Hassan's father. I only hope that Taymur can live up to his name by being as brave and as strong as his grandfather before him was. _

_Both Amaya and Taymur are simply adorable. The two of them were born with soft tufts of jet black hair on their heads and smooth olive skin. Right now, their eyes are a dark blue, but Mother says that their eyes will turn obsidian once they are a little older, and that all babies are born with blue eyes. Taymur has a strong, proud nose that reminds me of yours and Father's, but Amaya has a cute button nose that looks just like Mother's._

_They can only suckle and cry now, but I imagine that by the time that you receive this letter, they will be able to coo and hold onto my finger or Hassan's. _

_Every time I look at Amaya, I can picture myself laughing with her as I teach her how to sew, to cook, and to keep a tent clean. My heart swells with joy as I imagine myself witnessing the thousands of little triumphs that will be milestones on her journey to womanhood. _

_Whenever I hold Taymur, I can't help but think about for how short a time he will be in my arms. Soon, he will be learning to walk, clinging onto my fingertips as he waddles along. Then, he will be learning how to ride, fight, and herd sheep with his father. Tears fill my eyes as I envision him developing into a man as strong and as noble as Hassan or you. _

_I know that your duties keep you busy in the north, brother, and I would never want you to abandon any of your responsibilities for my sake, but I would be overjoyed if you could find the time to visit us in the desert. It would be wonderful if Amaya and Taymur had their uncle around to make funny faces at them when they are babies, and to tell them stories and jokes when they are older. I am sure that they will love you, and that you will be just as fond of them. Children grow so quickly, and I really do hope that your duties don't force you to miss too much of watching your niece and nephew develop. _

_Rest assured that you are forever in my heart, in my thoughts, and in my prayers. _

_Love always, _

_Laila _

"Laila gave birth to twins—a boy named Taymur and a girl called Amaya." Zahir broke into the wide beam of a man whose greatest dream had come true at last. "I'll be able to hold them and bounce them on my knee when they are little. When they're bigger, I'll help teach them to ride and sneak them treats. They'll love me, and I'll love them, Your Majesty."

"It's a pity, Squire, that you are probably convinced that raising children is a woman's work." The king smiled, as well, his cerulean eyes sparkling. "You seem to love children more than you realize, and I don't doubt that you would make a great father."

"Raising children isn't just a woman's work, sire," scoffed Zahir, flushing to the roots of his black hair. "A man who neglects his children is at least as much of a scumbag as the man who abandons his wife. Fathers, who are naturally sterner, are needed to discipline children when they are naughty, just as mothers, who are by nature more sympathetic, are needed to comfort them when they are hurt. Sons, in particular, need their fathers to teach them how to ride, how to herd, how to fight, and how to be a man. I'll always be indebted to my father for teaching me those things."

"Of course." His knightmaster nodded, even though Zahir could see that the man disagreed with this assessment. "Anyway, Zahir, it is fortunate that your uncle sent you a letter, because now there is a note for me to give you with my Midwinter gift. I thought that I might be reduced to giving you one of the holiday greeting cards I have sticking out of my ears."

"That would be foolish, Your Majesty, since, as I told you before, Bazhir don't celebrate Midwinter." Zahir's nostrils flared. "As such, Bazhir have no need for Midwinter greeting cards or Midwinter presents."

"Ah, indeed." The king's smile broadened as he thrust a wrapped gift into Zahir's arms. "Fortunately, the present is technically for your horse, not for you."

"My mare doesn't celebrate Midwinter, either," grunted Zahir, but his surliness faded when he opened the gift and stared down at the horse-brush his knightmaster had given him. The handle was carved from mahogany, and the bristles were the perfect melding of firmness and tenderness. He could imagine stroking out all the tangles from Sufia's mane and making her hair gleam like silver with this brush. Awed, he whispered, "It's beautiful, sire. I thank you."

"I'm glad you like it, Squire." King Jonathan patted his shoulder, locking eyes with him. "I want you to understand that I really do appreciate how much I am asking of you and that I only expect so much of you because you are one of those truly exceptional beings capable of sacrificing everything for others."

"May I go see Joren?" asked Zahir abruptly. "It's been awhile since I spoke with him."

"Very well." The king waved a dismissive hand. "I suppose that I can't expect someone as stubborn as you to ever give up on your friend. Midwinter luck, Zahir. Maybe that is what it will take to get through to the pigheaded Joren of Stone Mountain."

Bowing, Zahir disappeared into his bedroom, where he put away his new horse-brush and took off his cloak, which was damp from the snow and the ice. Then, he bustled out of the royal quarters and down the hallways and staircases to Joren's chamber.

"Come in," shouted Joren in his typical languid tone when Zahir knocked on the door of his bedroom.

"Happy Midwinter, Joren," Zahir said, as he stepped into his friend's bedchamber and seated himself on the desk chair opposite the mattress Joren was lounging upon.

"The same to you, Zahir," Joren responded, flicking a lazy glance over at Zahir. "Oh, wait, the Bazhir don't celebrate Midwinter. I guess I can only wish you a good day."

"That would be nice of you." Zahir's lips twitched for a minute before he went on more seriously, "You know, Joren, the new year is a time for new beginnings."

"This is fun." Joren smirked. "I will now be treated to a lecture on northern customs from a Bazhir. This might be the greatest comedy I will see all Midwinter. That will certainly devastate the players."

"Across the world, new years are regarded as a time for new beginnings," retorted Zahir, his lips thinning. "Anyhow, I thought you might take advantage of the fresh chance to redeem yourself for kidnapping Mindelan's maid."

"Mithros, please tell me you aren't still gnawing at that old, dry bone." Exasperated, Joren rolled his eyes. "Haven't you bothered me enough about that ridiculous subject?"

"I haven't mentioned it to you at all since the day after your trial," Zahir snapped. "Some might accuse me of not confronting you about it enough."

"Truthfully, I don't know why you think it necessary to keep nagging me about what I did to some whorish maid." Idly, Joren inspected his fingernails, as though they were infinitely more fascinating than the conversation he was currently engaging in with Zahir. "Surely, you have more pressing concerns on your mind. I know that I do. Perhaps your training isn't as intense as mine, though. Maybe that is why you have time to worry about serving wenches."

"None of us should ever be so busy that we don't have time to think about the ethics of our behavior." Zahir's jaw clenched. "I came to see you, Joren, because my father always said that dying in a state of impenitence was a terrible fate for any man. Maybe he is right. I don't know. What I do know is that living in a state of impenitence is worse. I don't understand why you want to cut yourself off from mercy and redemption when all you would need to do to start heading down the path of righteousness again would be to act sorry."

"Why should I act sorry when I'm not?" sneered Joren. "That seems like a pointless waste of time and energy."

"I don't see why you shouldn't be sorry," Zahir hissed. "You violated every code of honor protecting women and commoners."

"I did what I had to in order to preserve my honor." Joren shrugged.

"You had an innocent woman abducted." Zahir shook his head. "Nothing you say could ever make that right."

"I acted according to my principles, which are far more important than some dumb commoner woman." Joren bristled. "Yet again, I grow tired of talking to you. Why don't you go do something useful for once in your life and dress yourself properly for serving at tonight's party?"

"Fine." Understanding that he couldn't force someone whose ears were closed to hear the truth, Zahir shoved himself to his feet and crossed over to the door. "Just promise me that you'll think about what I said."

"If anything you said is worthy of consideration, I'll think about it," Joren reassured him wryly.

Recognizing that this was the best concession he would get out of his friend today, Zahir left the room, shutting the door quietly in his wake, and then returned to his room to don his uniform in the royal colors that clashed with his hair and skin tone for the party.

That evening, musicians played lilting tunes in the Crystal Room, a gilded jewel box of a chamber where the largest of the Midwinter First Night Parties was held. Garlands of winter flowers and ivy hung on the walls. Heavy logs burned in the two grand hearths, releasing piney aromas. Candles flickered in every window and in the crystal chandelier.

As he roamed around the room, carrying a tray loaded with tarts and marzipan figures, Zahir's gaze often came to rest enviously upon Prince Roald, who was the only squire who wasn't walking around offering trays full of food and beverages to guests. The prince, who was sitting with Princess Shinkokami appeared as politely stilted as ever in his interaction with his fiancée.

"Once the weather permits traveling, Your Highness, the progress will begin," Prince Roald told Princess Shinkokami, who immediately leaned forward to offer an attentive ear to her future husband, as Zahir extended the tray of desserts toward the couple. "We will head south, of course, because the weather will be milder. After several weeks of feasting and tournaments, we should reach the desert, where we will stay in the beautiful city of Persopolis built by the Bazhir for a few days. Then we shall turn around and start the journey north."

"That will allow us to spend the warmest part of the year in the north, and the coldest in the south," commented Princess Shinkokami, delicately selecting a tart, while her fiancé nodded as though this were the most insightful remark he had ever heard. "A wise decision on the part of those who organized the progress."

Zahir, however, had something besides climate and weather concerns on his mind as he moved off to offer his dessert tray to the mingling lords and ladies. If the progress would stop in Persopolis, that meant that, as the king's squire, he would be visiting the desert. That was wonderful. While he was there, he could ride out to see his sister, his brother-in-law, his niece, and his nephew. He could cradle Laila's twins in his arms. He could kiss the tender skin on their foreheads and rest their warm cheeks against his. He could help tuck them snugly under their blankets when it was their naptime. He could tickle their tiny toes. He could wrinkle his nose at them and contort his features into a hundred comically grotesque masks. It would be like a slice of paradise in this lifetime to spend just a couple of hours visiting his sister's tent.

The joy of imagining how it would feel to actually hold the children he was uncle to buoyed him through much of the night, and his pleasure was only increased as he watched from afar as the awkwardness between Prince Roald and Princess Shinkokami seemed to die away as they both joined in an animated conversation with Lord Raoul and Commander Buri in the book room off the main chamber.

It was only when it occurred to him that King Jonathan had made no mention of Cait joining them when they journeyed to Persopolis that the glow blazing inside him lost some of his luster.

"The progress is stopping in Persopolis," Zahir murmured to the king, as he extended the tray toward his knightmaster and Queen Thayet. "Cait will be going with us to the desert like you promised, won't she, sire?"

"I'm not certain that would be prudent, Zahir." Sighing, King Jonathan shook his head. "I wish for you to meet with many of the chiefs while we are in Persopolis, and it will be hard for you to gain their support as the candidate for being Voice after me if they see you romantically involved with a northern woman—especially one who is a warrior."

"This isn't about politics." Rebelliously, Zahir lifted his chin. "In case it slipped Your Majesty's mind, this is about a promise you made to me. Do you really want to teach me that it is perfectly fine to break my word if doing so is more convenient than keeping it?"

"Nothing good will come of you dragging Cait with you to the desert, Squire." His knightmaster's voice tightened, although his expression remained pleasant, so that anyone looking at him would only glimpse a benevolent ruler. "At best, a disaster would result, and, at worst, both you and her would be destroyed is that what you want?"

"I want what they have." The blood pounding a battle march against his eardrums, Zahir jerked his head in the direction of Prince Roald and Princess Shinkokami. "I want a happily ever after like your son. Is that so unreasonable a request?"

"Prince Roald and Princess Shinkokami are getting a happily ever after because they didn't struggle against what was expected of them." The king's azure eyes flashed dangerously. "People's happiness is often determined by how willingly they perform their duties. Fighting against what society requires of you is what tragedies, not happy endings, are made of, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"What society asks of me is wrong." With difficulty, Zahir quelled the impulse to stomp his foot in frustration. "I won't be happy as long as I'm doing something I believe to be immoral or I'm living a lie. Besides, how can you criticize me for trying to change the world for the better when that is all you do?"

"I'm not necessarily criticizing you," his knightmaster replied in a clipped voice. "All I'm saying is that you are setting yourself up for a life of battle, not peaceful happiness, if you insist on bringing Cait to the desert as a potential mate. Anyway, while I did promise you that Cait could accompany us next time we traveled to the desert, I'm not sure that will be possible. Her commander might wish to station her elsewhere, and she cannot place her love life before her duties, just as you cannot."

"I'm confident that she can have a love life and fulfill her duties," Queen Thayet cut in briskly. "Now, I'm going to talk to Buri about stationing Cait's Rider group as a guard for our royal personages."

"You'd do that for me?" gasped Zahir, shocked that the queen would ally herself with him against her husband.

"Consider it a Midwinter present from me, Squire Zahir," the queen declared, and, although her voice was cool, her hazel eyes shone with a warmth that reminded him of the logs burning in the hearths. As she strode away to speak with Buri, her husband scowled briefly at her back before regaining his polite, meaningless social beam that charmed so many of his subjects.


	55. Chapter 55

Written in Sand

"It's nice that our duties will keep us together at least until we leave the desert," remarked Keir, speaking of the fact that his, Cait's, and Aisha's Rider groups had all been assigned to protect the king and queen for the first half of the royal progress through the country.

Keir, Zahir, Aisha, and Cait were hopping from stony outcropping to stony outcropping along the rocky shore near Port Legann. The foam-crested waves of cold, turbulent water threatened to swallow their ankles every time they leaped from one stone to the next. Barnacles in every hue of the rainbow clung to each rock, making the slick surfaces even more slippery.

Zahir could only hope that his typically smooth footwork wouldn't betray him now. After all, he didn't want to end up as dead as the now rust-colored seaweed smashed against the sand and rocks jetting out into the Emerald Ocean, which wasn't aquamarine today, but rather as gray as the seagull's wings glinting in the cloudy, chilly March sky.

"I can't wait to see Laila and Hassan again," Zahir commented, shivering in his cloak. Stubbornly, he blamed his shaking solely on the blustery weather, not upon his fears of the frigid reception from the Bazhir that Cait was likely to encounter the instant the tribesmen discovered that the candidate for the next Voice was in love with her.

Zahir knew that they would not really look at her for who she was. Instead, they would just see a northern warrior woman of common blood who was horribly foreign and dreadfully unworthy of marrying any Bazhir, nonetheless a chief and future Voice. Somehow, though, he and Cait would make them see and appreciate her for who she was. After all, what use was either of their strong wills if their extensive willpower couldn't help fulfill their dreams?

Thinking that the first step of persuading others to his view was controlling his own mind, Zahir went on, focusing only on the positives of a trip to the desert and not the negatives, "It will be wonderful to be able to see and hold my new niece and nephew."

It was only when Aisha scowled at him that he realized his tongue had landed him in a pile of droppings again. "Yes, and I still can't believe that you didn't tell me at once that Laila had given birth to twins," she snapped.

"And I can't believe that you're still gnawing at that old bone," retorted Zahir. "You've yelled at me for not telling you about the birth of the twins at least one hundred times now. Isn't that enough?"

"No." Aisha shook her head, her dark hair billowing around her in the wind. "After all, if you were really sorry about forgetting to share important information with me, you wouldn't act as though I was wrong to scold you for your complete lack of concern for my feelings."

"I didn't forget to tell you," argued Zahir, rolling his eyes in impatience at his sister's logic or, in his opinion, lack thereof. "I told you the day after I received the news myself. Anyway, how was I supposed to even know that you cared about Laila or any children that she might have with her husband?"

"How were you supposed to know that I cared?" Aisha echoed. Her mouth fell open in shock as she halted abruptly, poised on the verge of jumping from one rocky outcropping to the next one.

"Yes." Zahir nodded, the salty sea breeze stinging his eyes, and the waves pounding in his eardrums so that he didn't know where the sound of them ended and his thumping heartbeat began. "How was I supposed to know that you cared about anyone in your family? Didn't you flee from your widowed mother? Didn't you let your older sister and your brother-in-law believe you dead in the desert? This might come as some surprise to somebody as selfish as you, Aisha, but if you care about your family, you don't abandon them or allow them to think that you're dead."

"I had no choice," hissed Aisha, her hands balling into fists and Zahir wondered if she would punch him in the mouth.

"Don't lie," Zahir growled, his eyes narrowing. "You put a higher price on fulfilling your own stupid dreams than on remaining with your family. If you really cared about your family, you would have stayed in the desert. Then you would have been there, as you should have been, to clutch your sister's hand and rub wet cloths along her forehead when she gave birth. Instead, you were leagues away from her, trying to achieve your own dreams, but, of course, you still say that you care about her, even if you don't love her nearly as much as you love yourself and your own silly goals."

"Well, I'm sorry that I have too much self-respect to just allow myself to be married off to an abusive jerk like Nadir," seethed Aisha, lifting her nose in the air haughtily. "That worked so well for Nasira, after all."

"I managed to protect Nasira from Nadir in the end, and I would have managed to protect you, too." Zahir's jaw clenched. "You could have written to me if you had a problem with him—"

"Oh, as if he wasn't controlling all the venues of communication outside of the tribe," Aisha snarled, her face contorting into a rather ugly expression. "As if you heard any real news until I escaped to Corus to speak with you in person. As if Nadir didn't want to be your only source of information on what was going on in the desert. You're naïve to think that he would have let you hear about such a wedding until it was done and until he had taken over the tribe."

"You could have returned to the tribe after I defeated Nadir, then," scoffed Zahir, determined not to be impressed by his sister's argument. "If you said that you had just ridden off to visit me, you could have made a good marriage and been in the desert with Laila when she gave birth to Amaya and Taymur. After all, since Nasira was always walking around with black eyes and cut lips, everyone would have just accepted that you ran away to escape an abusive marriage. Maybe everybody wouldn't approve of your decision, but they would have understood it at least. You chose not to return to your family just as surely as you chose to flee from them."

"Fine. Have it your way," Aisha spat. "I am a selfish jerk. I chose to abandon my family to pursue my own desires. Now, why don't you tell me how you are any better than me?"

"I only left the desert because I had to." Zahir bristled. "Father wished for me to train as a knight in the north, and I obeyed him like a good son should. If it were up to me, I would have remained in the desert forever, but I gave up my personal desires to do what my family wished of me. That's the exact opposite of what you did. You placed your own wishes above your family's needs. You cared more about your own happiness than about the welfare of your entire family."

"Ah, yes, and you don't place your own desire to be with Cait above what all the Bazhir wish for in the mate of their future Voice." Sarcasm was etched into every syllable that emerged from Aisha's tight lips. "You certainly don't place your own happiness above the welfare of your entire people when you decide that you'll marry whoever you want, even if it means that the Bazhir will again have to deal with a Voice too northern for their tastes. Selfishness is the only unforgivable offense if it's practiced by anyone but you. When you are guilty of it, you find a fancy way of saying that you aren't. Please don't feel like a stinking hypocrite, although you do have the worst case of selective morality I've ever encountered—"

"Don't profane my love by dragging politics into it," snapped Zahir.

"If you cared about your people more than about yourself, you would be more concerned with Bazhir politics than your love," Aisha concluded in a hard tone, ignoring his heated interjection. "I suggest that you remember that before you accuse me of selfishness. After all, you and I really aren't so different. The main thing that separates us is that I have accepted my own selfishness, and you have yet to accept your own selfishness."

"I'll never allow myself to be selfish." Dimly, Zahir could feel himself trembling with wrath. "It is my honor and joy to serve others even if it is at the expense of myself."

"It's your honor, but is it truly your joy?" Aisha demanded skeptically, arching an eyebrow. Before he could respond, she continued in a sharp voice, "I doubt it. Like me, you have dreams, and you have been in the north far too long to stifle them. You want to make your dreams become reality, but you also feel a compulsion to serve your people. You're miserable because it isn't your joy to blindly do whatever duty requires of you anymore, but it also isn't your joy to just chase your dreams without regard to what is expected of you. You're unhappy because you're torn between duty and desire."

"What do you want me to do about that?" asked Zahir bitterly. "Until you can solve that dilemma, you can shut up, because you aren't telling me anything I don't know already."

"You must choose between duty and desire," Aisha answered, as though it were as obvious as the fact that the waves churning around them were wet. "In this world, you can be a Bazhir or a northerner, but you can't be both. However much you might want to, you can't always serve yourself and others. Sometimes you can only help yourself or others. When it comes down to it, you have to decide which matters more to you—living how you want to or living how others want you to."

"Living how others want me to is how I wish to live," Zahir ground out through gritted teeth.

"Then there should never be any conflict between what you want and what others want," pointed out Aisha dryly. "Therefore, you should never be unhappy. That doesn't sound much like you, though, because sometimes what you want clashes with what others want from you—"

"You make it sound like everyone wants the same thing from me," interrupted Zahir, a vein throbbing in his neck. "Well, don't go into cardiac arrest, but they don't. People all want different things from me. Cait wants my unconditional love, the Bazhir expect me to marry some chief's daughter, and the king demands that I always do his will no matter how crazy it is."

"Then you have to decide who is most important to you, don't you?" Aisha said tersely. "If you say it is Cait, then you have to ask yourself if you are fit to be Voice to a people you don't value more than the girl you love and if you are able to serve a king you can't obey without reservation."

"And are you able to be a part of a military organization when you are only motivated by your desire to be a warrior woman to boost your own ego, not by a humble wish to serve people?" hissed Zahir, glaring at her.

"I see no reason to talk with you if you have such a low opinion of me." Tossing her long black hair behind her defiantly, Aisha vaulted from the rock they were standing on back onto the shore. Then, without pausing to say farewell, she strode down the beach, retreating along the sand to the bright tents housing every member of the royal progress from the king and queen down to the lowest-ranking scullery maid.

"You hurt her feelings." Keir's voice was sharp as he made this statement, and Zahir started. During his argument with his sister, which could have taken place beside any oasis in the desert he had been raised in, he had completely forgotten that Cait and Keir were present.

His cheeks blazing as though they had been burned by the sun hiding behind the heavy clouds, Zahir thought about everything he had said about how he wanted to be with Cait—and just how complicated being with her made life for him and for the Bazhir as a whole. That was wonderful. He had agreed to take this walk along the seashore with Cait, Keir, and Aisha because it had seemed a grand opportunity to free himself, however temporarily, from the snare of politics. Instead, thanks to Aisha's tactlessness, the sticky spiderweb of disgusting political realities had wrapped itself around him and Cait again. Grimly, he asked himself how long, now that he and Cait were trapped in the web, it would take for the spider to devour them.

"If she values her feelings so much, she shouldn't go around offending so many people," snapped Zahir. "She never misses an opportunity to poke fun at me, so she shouldn't complain when I give her a taste of her own cooking and make her reap what she sows."

"Keep talking. Maybe one day you'll say something that justifies your own boorishness." With a snort, Keir leaped off the stone outcropping, landed on the sandy shoreline with the waves lapping at his shins, and set off down the beach after Aisha's fading figure.

"I'm sorry if I was boorish." As he offered this stilted apology, Zahir found that he couldn't bring himself to look at Cait, and so he ducked his head to study the barnacles beneath his feet instead.

"It doesn't matter." Zahir could hear the smile in Cait's tone, and so he risked a glance up at her to see that she was grinning. "I'm a piece of commoner trash, so naturally I could only fall in love with a boor."

"A sand scut and a piece of commoner trash are perfectly suited." Zahir snorted. "I can't think of a match more guaranteed to make the pulse of many a blueblood throb."

"Don't call yourself a sand scut." Cait shook her head, so that her plait of auburn smacked against her head in the wind blowing off the sea. "I don't want anyone—even you—making nasty comments about your ethnicity, because your ethnicity is part of who you are, and who you are is beautiful."

"Then don't call yourself a piece of commoner trash," retorted Zahir. "You probably came from a better family than Joren of Stone Mountain did."

"Well, I certainly didn't come from a wealthier family than he did." Cait smirked. "I'm as common as the oysters my father used to catch to sell in the market to feed us."

"At least you aren't as dark as dirt." Gently, Zahir tapped her nose. "Besides, pearls come from oysters. You can be my pearl from a family of oysters."

"Diamonds are dug from deep within the dirt," trilled Cait, leaping onto the next rocky outcropping. "You can be the diamond I never really expected to dig up in the grime of my ordinary life—the sort of diamond that everybody hopes to find, and almost nobody ever does. You know, the kind that everyone prays to hold in their hands just once in their lifetimes. The sort that no one dares to dream of actually possessing. The type that just having in your hands for a moment is enough to sustain you through everything or else to break your heart with longing for something that can never truly be yours."

Cait's tone had begun as playful and airy, but, by the end of her speech, it sounded almost despairing and leaden, as though she couldn't maintain the façade of joking about what was tearing her apart.

"You'll always be mine," Zahir assured her in a hushed voice, feeling as if a giant fist were crushing his windpipe as he rubbed Cait's palm between his hands. "I'd marry you now if I could, but I reckon that things will go easier for you in the desert if we try to make the Bazhir see reason before we tie the knot between us."

"Tell me what else you would do to me now if you could," Cait murmured in his ear, her breath brushing seductively against his skin.

"That's not an answer for a lady's ears." His eyes sparkling, Zahir nipped at the tender flesh of her earlobe. When she yelped in astonishment, he chuckled, twisted her around to face him, and kissed her, hoping that she would feel all the passion for her welling inside him that he could never manage to put into words. "Your request was also one that should never leave a lady's lips."

"Ladies don't know how to make proper conversation, do they?" Her entire face glowing, Cait stroked his arms and his thighs, her hands somehow creating the illusion that she was touching everywhere and nowhere at once. The sensation of Cait's bare flesh running over his own clothed skin prompted a moan to rise in his throat that he had to struggle to prevent from exploding from his mouth. Although Cait's palms were coated liberally with calluses, her touch was somehow gentle, and it was this peculiar melding of strength and softness that Zahir relished most about her. Cait's fingers were squeezing his upper thigh in a way that made him comprehend how a person could simultaneously and without contradiction wish for a touch never to end and hope that the hand igniting fires all over your skin would stop touching you. Every moment he spent with Cait was ecstasy and torture. She was all the pain and pleasure of life multiplied to an impossible degree, and that was the closest he could come to qualifying his passion for her in mathematical terms. "I mean, the language of love is one of stolen glances and touches, and not of words, isn't it?"

"Maybe you're right." Zahir allowed his hands to trail down her arms until they rested on her thighs. "Why are we wasting our precious time together with all this chatter?"

"Because your tongue—"Cait's tongue darted between his lips and danced against his—"failed to answer my question."

"Fine." Zahir rubbed his tongue roughly against hers. "I'd take you here on the beach until we both saw stars in broad daylight. After that, I'd kidnap you. I'd drag you off some place where we wouldn't have to worry about politics or about what we owed anyone. We'd find ourselves a little private island in that big ocean where we'd just make each other happy until we died. Nobody would ever be able to find us, and the king would have to bully someone else into being the Voice after him. We'd be free of all our responsibilities. It would be like paradise."

"It's paradise here with you." Cait nuzzled her cheek against his. "I don't know if there is an afterlife or not, and right now, I don't care. I know there is our love, and that is enough—more than enough, in fact."

"If it's all for nothing, all this racing about and stressing over a thousand things that don't make a difference in the end, I'm still glad that I have you as a traveling companion to angst with." Smiling, Zahir let his fingers stray briefly—ever so briefly—up to stroke the fabric that divided him from the tantalizing, secret triangle between her legs.

Then, before either of them could be tempted to do anything that would get them in more trouble than they were in already, he withdrew his hand. Clothes might have seemed like such an unbearably thick barrier when they were all that was separating your flesh from your lover's, but clothes were really much too easy to remove. Worse still, once they were removed, there was nothing to stop him from plunging inside of her.

He and Cait weren't married, yes, but the sacred bond of matrimony appeared to be a very abstract, unimportant concept on this seashore when they both wanted nothing more than to drown in an ocean of love.

On this beach, it was as though the only real people in the world were him and Cait. If he and Cait were the only beings in the world, they certainly didn't have to fret about society's definitions of marriage or morality. They only needed to be concerned with what they felt was right, and both of them felt it was right for him to take her now. Both of them knew that there was nothing wrong with them finally consummating their love. At least, he thought both of them knew that, but if that was true, why did Zahir hesitate to take her?

"You can have me now if you want." Cait's whispered words were loud enough to shatter Zahir's whole world. "Nobody would ever have to know."

"I'd know," Zahir pointed out through lips that were numb from kissing.

"That's kind of the point, actually." Cait's fingers closed around the buttons on his breeches, and he could feel himself stiffening, even though he didn't want to prepare himself for a deed he couldn't finish. "I want you to know me. Do you get it now, or should I just let my body explain it all to you?"

Zahir thought that their bodies had done too much thinking and explaining already, but the words died on his lips, which were parted in pleasure. He never discovered whether he would have found a way to protest Cait's advances, because a commanding voice rang out from the shore behind them, ordering, "Take your hands off each other now."

"Of course." Scowling, Zahir spun around to glare at his knightmaster, who was dressed in a cloak as teal as the ocean should have been. "I shouldn't dare to touch anyone or anything in Your Majesty's realm without Your Majesty's written consent."

Ignoring Zahir's insolent remark, King Jonathan addressed Cait, whose hands had fallen away from the already dwindling evidence of Zahir's arousal, "Kindly return to your Rider group now, dear girl. I want my squire to join me on my solitary walk."

"Yes, sire." Shooting Zahir a glance that was almost as affectionate as a goodbye kiss, Cait bowed, hopped back onto the sand, and hurried back to the tents dotting the distant shoreline.

"You aren't taking a walk," growled Zahir once Cait was out of earshot, jumping over to join the king he was fighting the urge to murder. "You just thought that Cait and I had been out alone too long. You were just trying to break us up."

"Good thing I was." The king shot him a look as cold as the water hitting the sand. "You were about to have sex with her on a rocky outcropping where anyone could have seen you. Do you have any idea what that could have done to your reputation and to hers?"

"I don't care," snarled Zahir mutinously, his hands clenching into fists that longed to punch King Jonathan in the jaw. "I'd just tell all the gossips that I would have married her first and done it properly, but you wouldn't let me do that. Yes, I'd just tell everybody that you wanted me to have her as my slut—not as my bride."

"You wouldn't dare." The king clutched Zahir's shoulders tightly enough to bruise.

"Telling the truth is one thing I've always dared to do, Your Majesty," Zahir spat.

"If you love the truth so much, you would, of course, remember to say that I always urged you not to be with Cait at all," stated King Jonathan, offering the fake, gleaming smile that probably had landed many a diplomat in a serpent's lair. "Certainly, you would also not fail to mention that I advised you to be discreet in any relations you had with her. You would also not neglect to assure anyone who asked that I told you to give her a charm to prevent pregnancies, so that no accidents would happen."

"Oh, it's so like you, sire, to refer to any babies I might have with Cait as accidents." Zahir gritted his teeth so loudly that he was confident that the noise would sound like a thunderstorm in Carthak. "Well, let me tell you that they wouldn't be accidents to us. They would be blessings."

"They wouldn't be blessings," corrected the king in a clipped manner, shaking his head. "For both you and Cait, those babies would be disasters."

"They would be disasters to you, but not to Cait or me." Derisively, Zahir snorted. "After all, if I got her pregnant, then I would have to do the right thing by her, and you are haunted by the fear that I just might do the right thing by Cait, aren't you, Your Majesty?"

"You wouldn't be doing the right thing by Cait. How many times do I have to explain that to you?" Impatience laced the king's tone. "You would be destroying her future and your own."

"The future is written in sand." Zahir shrugged. "Cait and I should live in the eternal now, not in some distant future that might never come for either of us. Anyway, it's not like you are concerned with Cait's future or mine. You are just worried that if I marry Cait, I'll damage my chances of the Bazhir accepting me as the Voice after you."

"You should be worried about that, too," hissed King Jonathan. "It's incredibly selfish of you not to be. It's horrible of you to put your own petty sexual desires above the needs of your people."

"Don't call me selfish," Zahir shouted, his voice breaking. Rage as blue as the hottest part of a flame seared through him, burning the ragged remnants of his heart. "You're the one who demands everything of me and of everybody else in your kingdom. You are the one who doesn't care about my dreams or desires. You are the one who looks at me and sees only how I can be used as a pawn in one of your sick political chess games. You want me to do your will so much that if I dare to have a dream that goes against your plans for me, you call me selfish. With you, it's never about what I want or need. It's always about what you want or need, and if I have the nerve to actually want something different than what you want for me, my rebelliousness needs to be crushed. You don't care about me. All you care about is what I can do for you, and yet I am the selfish one?"

"I care about you." His knightmaster's tone softened slightly. "What you must understand, Squire, is that, at your age, people fall in and out of love easily. Love is far more than kisses, pretty words, flowers, and jewelry. It must endure long after the thrill of the first attraction is gone. When I was your age, I fancied myself in love with Alanna, just as she thought that she was in love with me. Years later, we discovered that we would be better off marrying rocks than wedding one another. She wouldn't make a good queen, and we would hate each other every day of our lives for forcing her into a role she wasn't fit to fill. We are much happier with people who help us in our duties rather than hindering us. The halves that made us whole were those who could truly be our partners in everything. When you meet the woman who can be your companion in everything, then you will be grateful that I stopped you from having sex with Cait now. You'll be glad that you were able to save yourself for the woman who was worthy of being your partner in every sense of the word."

"You tell such lovely lies, sire." Zahir was choking on his own ire now. "You just want me to remain a virgin because nobody has ever heard of a human sacrifice who wasn't a virgin, and all I'll ever be to you is a sacrifice."

"I love you like a father loves his son, Zahir ibn Alhaz, and I've lost track of how many times I've had to explain that to you." Sighing, the king reached out to mess up Zahir's hair. "What will it take for you to believe me?"

"It would take you acting like you loved me." Zahir rolled his eyes. "Actions speak louder than words, Your Majesty, as the cliché assures us, and cliches, unlike kings, never lie."

"Zahir, I love you," King Jonathan insisted quietly. "Just because I love you, though, that doesn't mean that I won't sacrifice you. I love you but I will not spare you for your sake or mine. After all, how could I ask you to sacrifice someone you loved if I wasn't willing to do the same?"

"You wouldn't recognize love if it bit you in the ass like it does everybody else," scoffed Zahir. "Even if you did, let me assure you that I don't want a part of your twisted idea of love, which always sacrifices dear ones on the altar of political expediency. If you really loved anyone, you wouldn't put politics above them."

"If I didn't put politics above loved ones, I wouldn't be fit to rule." Once again, his knightmaster sighed. "I do what I must, even if doing so makes me miserable. I surrender my personal happiness for the sake of my people, and I ask you to make a similar sacrifice for your people. Don't imagine that I don't know what I am asking of you, since I know better than anyone what I am asking you to give up for the Bazhir. Understand, too, that I only ask this of you because I believe you are somebody strong and honorable enough to always place your needs and wishes after those of others. Frankly, if you don't take this burden, I don't know who will."

"When you say that, you only add to my burden," muttered Zahir, bashing his hand against his forehead, and wishing that no one would ever ask anything of him ever again. "No matter what you think, I can't be all things to all people. Why do you demand the impossible of me? I'm not a miracle worker."

"You can be more of one than you realize, and it was never my intention to add to your burden," replied the king softly.

"Don't lie." His temper flaring again, Zahir stamped his foot into the sand. "Ever since you first met me, you planned on adding to my burden. I wouldn't be of much use to you, sire, if you couldn't dump a million responsibilities I never sought upon my shoulders, would I?"

King Jonathan opened his mouth to protest this, but, nausea blooming in his chest like a weed, Zahir could not bear to listen to any more lies that would doubtlessly be meant to pacify him and that would only serve to incense him.

"I'm going back to my tent," he declared stiffly, because he was tired of being told that he couldn't do anything that he wished to do, he stalked off before his knightmaster could attempt to halt him.

The sand clinging to his shoes in a way that was different from how the desert sand attached itself to the soles of his shoes but was no less annoying, he marched back to the mass of colorful tents swaying slightly in the wind.

When he reached his tiny, sunflower-yellow tent, which, as if to emphasize its diminutive size, had been erected beside the expansive, indigo royal tent, he yanked the flaps open and then tugged them shut behind him. The decisive snap that the flaps made as they were pulled closed provided him with the illusion that he could keep the world at bay, just like he had on the beach with Cait.

Since Cait wasn't with him, the belief that he could keep the world at bay, however temporarily, didn't fill him with an uncontrollable, reckless euphoria as it had on the beach. Thinking dismally that if he could just get back that feeling of boundless bliss and freedom unhampered by any obligations to society as a whole, he would donate everything he owned to the realm's impoverished without a single complaint, Zahir collapsed on his sleeping mat.

As he fell onto his sheets and pillows, he couldn't help but noting inwardly how much more comfortable, warm, and soft the sleeping mat would feel if Cait had been stretched out beside him upon it. If she were here, he could have curled up against her body, which was warmer and softer than any blanket could ever be. He could have stroked every copper gold strand on her head until his mind had forgotten every fret in his life. He could have buried his nose in her hair and drank in the sweet scent of her long enough to forget the stench of society's corruption. She could have wrapped her arms around him, held him against her chest, and assured him with her mere touch that she would be able to get him through everything, no matter how impossible that seemed. She could have kissed away all his fears and his pain.

Better than anyone, she knew how to comfort him when he was lonely or despairing. She didn't just know how to challenge him for all the wrong things that he had done, she also knew how to make him forgive himself for them. When he was with her, all the anguish he had known and all the violence burning in his soul was taken from him with just a kiss from her magical lips. Somehow, she was able to remove all his rough edges and replace them with tenderness.

Yet, she wasn't here. That meant that he had to bury his face into his pillows, which smelled only of himself and soup, and not of her. That meant that he had to settle for snuggling into his blankets, which felt cold and prickly against him.

Tears pricked at his eyes, but, despite the fact that he was horribly alone, he refused to allow them to fall. Without Cait, he didn't have much, so the little dignity that he did possess without her was something that he must treasure all the more. After all, he told himself sternly, he wasn't such a baby that he would wail if he wasn't cuddled.

As a boy, he had been thrashed with a rod until bruises covered every inch of his back, his rump, and his legs, and he had not cried. That was how strong and proud he was. If he didn't shed tears of pain, then he shouldn't sob over lost love like some smitten maidservant. Unfortunately, to his chagrin, he was discovering that it was easier to ignore physical pain than emotional agony.

When his flesh was being torn by a rod, his mind could focus on something else, but when it was his heart that was being ripped asunder, it was difficult to find the courage to do so. He could continue to exist with gaping holes where his skin had been, but when there was only a hollow in his ribcage where his heart had once resided, he had no morale left to fight for anything.

Bitterly, Zahir thought that he finally understood just how much King Jonathan opposed a marriage between him and Cait. The king, he saw at last, would not only never agree to a wedding between them, he would also do everything in his considerable power to prevent such a thing from happening.

It wasn't fair that a chief like him couldn't choose whom he married, he screamed inside his skull, as he kicked at the blankets that were pressing much too heavily against his chest, trying to suffocate him before society could.

Desperate, hopeless anger pounded through his veins as he found that the more he struggled against his sheets, the more they clutched onto his skin, oppressing him and weighing him down. Cursing, Zahir suddenly remembered all the tales his father had told him about young Bazhir couples who tried to escape into the desert when their parents wouldn't allow them to marry. As the blankets clung to him like a funeral shroud, he recalled hearing how the couples were invariably caught and stoned.

With a pang, he reflected that, as a child, he had never understood why the young Bazhir lovers fled into the desert. At the time, he had thought the lovers foolish to believe that they wouldn't be caught and killed. He had thought that they hadn't truly grasped the gruesome fate that awaited them if they were captured, and that, if they had, they would never have attempted to escape into the desert.

Now, he comprehended all too well that the lovers had known that they were likely to be caught and stoned, but they had been driven berserk by the need to flee from a society determined to crush them. They were willing to risk death for a chance at a life with the one they loved more than life itself. Life without the one they loved petrified them more than death alongside their beloved. In the end, they had preferred death of the body by stoning to death of the spirit by lost love. As the stones hurled at them cracked their skin and as the sand beneath them turned crimson with their blood, they must have felt a savage sense of victory and defeat. When their bones were broken, they must have taken a perverse satisfaction in knowing that society could only shatter their bodies, not their souls. Perhaps, even as their heads were smashed, they could find the strength to twist their bleeding lips into a final, defiant smile.

Yes, Zahir could see how the lovers could die believing that they had won a pyrrhic victory when they were stoned, but he still couldn't help but wonder if they really were the losers. If you took any street packed with ordinary people, he asked himself, would the lovers be the losers or the winners?

He was jolted out of his bleak musings when he heard the flaps of his tent rustle as they opened. Looking up to snap at whoever had entered to leave him alone before he disemboweled them, he found himself meeting Cait's concerned gaze.

"I really enjoyed our walk along the shore," she murmured, her quiet voice quelling all the fiery thoughts and words blazing inside him. "I'm sorry if you felt like I was pushing myself on you earlier. It's just I love you so much—"

"I love you, too." Zahir wondered if it was possible to choke on your heart if it somehow had lodged itself in your throat after it had been ripped apart. "I want to have you as much as you want to have me. I just can't have you unless I'm married to you. It wouldn't be right for me to take you unless you were my wife."

"You wouldn't be taking anything I wasn't offering," Cait said, threading her fingers through his. "I'd be giving you something. You wouldn't be stealing anything from me."

"Give yourself to me when we are married, Cait." For a moment, he brought his lips to hers. Then, almost breathlessly, he went on, "I promise you that, no matter how impossible it seems now, we will be properly married. Our love might feel like something that could never be, but it is real. When we were on the beach together, it was as if we didn't have responsibilities to anyone but ourselves, yet we do, and we have to fulfill those obligations. It might have felt like there was no one in the world apart from us, but there was. We may have longed to escape from everything, but we can't. That means that we will just have to find a way to fulfill both our dreams and our duties. We'll have to make our love work in the real world and not on some fantasy island."

"Can we do that?" Biting her lip anxiously, Cait leaned her head against his shoulder. "Aisha seems to think that we can't."

"If one of Aisha's thoughts died, the other would perish of loneliness," Zahir grunted.

"That doesn't answer my question, Zahir." Cait rolled her eyes. "If you were smarter than your sister, I wouldn't have to point that out to you."

"Then, to answer your question, I would say that we have to figure out how to make our love work in the real world." Zahir's tone was hard, but his hands were gentle as they combed through Cait's hair. "If we give up our love, our hearts will break and our spirits will be destroyed, but if we completely defy society, we will be crushed."

"I suppose you're right." Cait took a deep breath, causing her spine to stiffen like a spear. "Well, if we have to do it, we will."

Marveling out how unflinching she could be, he grinned. "You really are one of the bravest and strongest women that I know."

"Why do you say 'women' of 'people'?" Cait elbowed him in the ribs. "Is there some reason you feel the need to distinguish between brave, strong women and brave, strong men?"

"Of course there is." Zahir tapped her nose. "Most of the bravest, strongest people I know have been women, while a majority of the most cowardly, weakest people I know have been men. Does that satisfy your pride?"

"Only because I know how much it must have hurt your pride to tell that lie in order to assuage mine." Cait giggled, and the sound of her amusement was so wonderfully liberating that he couldn't help but think that laughter might be one of the few ways they could make their love work in the real world neither of them could escape.


	56. Chapter 56

Sweet and Spicy

In the time since he had left the desert, Zahir had managed to forget how much he loved it in the morning. The sand that crunched beneath Sufia's hooves was as crisp as the morning air before all the night's chill was sapped from it. Overhead, the ripening apricot of the sun shone amidst the raspberry, peach, and plum clouds that hung as heavy in the dawn sky as stars did in the midnight one. All the rising sun's light was captured in the sand and reflected back to the world as a whole in dazzling gleams of copper, bronze, and gold. Even the rocks and the cacti appeared softer in the dawn glow than they did in noon's sharp relief.

Mornings in the desert were simply magical, he thought, and it was a pity indeed that Cait's Rider group wasn't currently guarding the king and queen, which meant that she was positioned further back in the progress than he was. That, in turn, meant that he couldn't share with her whispers of how splendid the desert looked this morning. Even a ride in the desert in the morning wasn't as fun without Cait's presence beside him.

If it were up to him, he concluded, he and Cait would be racing through the desert together. They would be traveling just slow enough to absorb the beauty of the landscape and to appreciate it as more than just streaks of beige and tan. However, they wouldn't be moving at a particularly slow snail's pace like this caravan of courtiers.

No, they would push their horses into a steady canter, so that they could feel the wind smashing against their cheeks and experience the wonderful euphoria that came from believing, for even a half hour, that they were as free as the wind. When the wind whipped at their faces, they would feel the true spirit of the desert—the fierce independence that had allowed the Bazhir to understand wild horses more clearly than any other race ever could have.

It wasn't up to him, though, or, at least, it wasn't today. Still, he told himself, there was always tomorrow. Tomorrow or the next day he could take Cait on a ride through the desert in the morning. Then she could see that the desert was as much about boundless promise and unfettered freedom as it was about living in harmony with the past and embracing the collective self of a tribe—and an entire people. If she could see that, perhaps she could better picture how a trip to the desert could breathe fresh life into their relationship rather than killing it.

He had only just arrived at this determination when the sight of shepherds and goatherds urging their animals to drink from an oasis, which, in the dawn light, looked like a melted rainbow rather than a pool of water.

As he watched the sheep and goats lap from the oasis, Zahir grinned. Where there were shepherds and goatherds, there would be a whole tribe nearby. The progress, then, must be approaching the campsite of the Sandrunner tribe, who would be hosting the entire delegation for several nights, and who were already housing chiefs and other important Bazhir from across the desert, all of whom doubtlessly wished to meet formally or informally with the Voice.

A few minutes of riding later, Zahir's heart leaped into his lungs when he saw the canvas tents of his people stretching proudly against the wind like mountains in the midst of a sea of sand. As they approached the tent city, the king, the queen, Princes Roald and Eitaro, and Princess Shinkokami, who were leading the procession a few horses ahead of Zahir, were hailed by a young man wearing the white burnoose favored by many male Bazhir.

"Please accept my humble greetings, Voice of the Tribes, esteemed wife of the Voice, beloved children of the Voice, and valued guests of the Voice." The wiry young man who had ridden out to welcome the royal personages bowed as deeply as he could on his stallion, which, Zahir observed to himself admiringly, was as dark as a moonless night. "The Sandrunner tribe extends every hospitality to you and your entourage. Tomorrow at noon, we hope that, gods willing, you will meet with the headmen who have assembled here. Tonight, gods willing, you and your companions will enjoy the marvelous feast we have planned for you. For now, though, I will escort you to the tent we have prepared for you, where I hope that you will make yourself comfortable before tonight's festivities."

His speech over, the man offered another bow and then led King Jonathan, Queen Thayet, Princes Roald and Eitaro, Princess Shinkokami, several of the queen's and princess' ladies, and Zahir himself toward the mass of tents. As the group broke off from the rest of the delegation, Zahir registered out of the corner of his eye that at least a dozen other young men had ridden out to escort other members of the entourage to their respective tents.

As he followed Lady Haname's palfrey into the village of tents, Zahir expected to see giggling children tagging and taunting one another as they raced around underfoot. He believed he would spot veiled women outside their tents polishing pots and preparing food next to men carving staffs and cleaning saddles. He thought that he would hear women haggling over prices of linens and exchanging news of their families. He imagined that he would hear men boasting of their own cleverness or cursing their opponent's wiliness as they won or lost games of moncalla and backgammon. His nose anticipated that the scent of the smoke from the men's pipes mingling with the tea the women were forever serving each other would constantly permeate the air.

Instead, no childish laughter rang out against the tent poles, and no boys or girls dashed through the dusty lanes. No adults lingered outside their tents smoking, sharing tea and gossip, or completing chores. All the Bazhir they passed were men. It was as if all the women had retreated into their tents, and the few men who ventured outside were all walking briskly to their destinations, their faces—already weathered from years of battering by the sun, the wind, and the sand—set into harder, wearier lines than ever.

Trying and failing to swallow the knot that had formed in his chest, Zahir thought that this wasn't desert life as he remembered it. Something had invaded it and perverted it. People in the desert weren't living anymore. They were dying by degrees, and he had to uncover why. He had to save them. He couldn't risk them losing, after all these centuries, the wild spirit that defined the Bazhir.

He was so wrapped up in his musings that it took him a moment to realize that their guide had halted outside a capacious tent that probably usually lodged the Sandrunner chief. Snapping himself out of his reverie, he dismounted Sufia and trailed behind the others into the tent.

As soon as he stepped into the tent, Zahir felt as if he had entered back into the desert life with which he was familiar. Rich carpets with vibrant threads woven into winding medallions and flowers covered the earthen floor. A cypress table for kneeling around was placed in the center of the main portion of the tent, and silk cushions for reclining upon were spread throughout the tent. Jars of olive oil and water rested in one corner. Baskets of lentils and flatbread were piled in another corner. Bowls of nuts, dates, figs, and pomegranates filled the cypress table. Mint, thyme, saffron, turmeric, and cumin hung from the tent's ceiling and the curtains dividing the men's and women's quarters from the main area.

Looking beyond the silk curtains that separated the male side of the tent from the living portion, Zahir saw that half a dozen soft sleeping mats with thick wool blankets had been laid out. The woman who had made up these sleeping mats had also placed sprigs of jasmine flowers on top of every pillow. As a result of this, the sweet aroma of jasmine blended perfectly with the spicy smell of the herbs, neither the sweetness nor the spiciness overpowering each other.

Smiling, Zahir took a deep breath, inhaling the scent. This smell of spices and jasmine, he decided, defined the Bazhir and the desert. A glorious medley of spicy and sweet—that was what the Bazhir and the desert were.

"Happy to be back home?" the king asked, gently shaking Zahir's shoulder.

"Yes, sire." Opening his eyes once more, Zahir nodded. "No matter what, it's good to be back home where I belong."

"You might feel even more at home if you were reunited with you older sister and her husband." King Jonathan's keen gaze sparkled down at Zahir. "I believe they are here for the meetings and the festivities, Squire. If you'd like, you have my permission to spend the rest of the day and the evening with them. I would want you back here in time for tomorrow's conference with the other Bazhir headmen, though."

"I will be, Your Majesty." Positively elated at the prospect of being able to hug his older sister and clutch the little fingers of his newborn niece and nephew, Zahir's smile widened into a full-fledged beam. Although he still hadn't forgiven his knightmaster for the perpetual attempts to separate him from Cait, the man was also granting him the opportunity to see his family again, so he couldn't help being grateful for that. The love burning in his chest for Laila, Hassan, Amaya, and Taymur was so strong that he couldn't help but share some of its heat with other people like King Jonathan. "Of course, I haven't, technically, been invited to spend the night with them."

"With family, you should always feel free to overstay your welcome." His knightmaster chuckled. "Home, after all, is the place where, when you show up at the door like a beggar, they have to take you in no matter how much they gripe about it."

"Tents don't have doors," pointed out Zahir, sauntering toward the flaps of the royal tent. "They have flaps, sire."

"Impudent boy." King Jonathan shook his head in mock reproof. "I could always change my mind about permitting you to visit your family, you know, Zahir."

"That's true. After all, Your Majesty is renowned for your capriciousness, and that's not the sort of reputation you want to go to waste." His face shining with mischievousness, Zahir ducked out of the tent and strode over to the tent next door, where two sentries from Aisha's Rider group stood guard.

Recognizing him as the king's squire and a friend of the young woman they referred to as Zarina, the sentinels let him enter the tent without even a perfunctory challenge.

"Come visit Lalia, Hassan, and the twins with me," Zahir said, as he reached Aisha, who was busy unrolling her sleeping mat. "You can do this later."

"I can't go see Laila or anyone else in our family." Aisha's tone was flat, as though the desert that had renewed the life in Zahir had leached it from her bones and soul. "Don't you understand why?"

"No." Zahir's forehead furrowed. "I don't, unless, of course, your family really doesn't mean anything to you, and you'll go out of your way to avoid them."

"Is that what you think I'm doing?" hissed Aisha, her cheeks flaming. "Do you think it isn't killing me inside not to see them? Don't you understand that I'm only refusing to visit them because I want to protect them?"

"I think you're raving." Zahir snorted. "You may not be the nicest company, but your mere presence is hardly enough to endanger your family."

"Zahir, no one can even being to suspect that Laila and I are sisters." Aisha's face tightened even as her voice lowered to a fierce whisper. "If people started investigating my background, they might discover that I'm not who I claim to be and that my father never gave me permission to be here."

"That doesn't matter now." Zahir waved a dismissive hand. "Since Father is dead, under Bazhir law, until you marry, you are under my authority. If I give you permission to serve the realm as a Rider, nobody can contradict me."

"That might have been so once." Aisha sighed. "Now I fear that it is not the case. My oldest friend Khalila bint Waahid wrote to me at the palace shortly before we left—"

"Khalila wrote to you before we left the palace?" echoed Zahir, his mouth falling open. "How can she have when she didn't even know you were there?"

"She knew I was there," Aisha informed him curtly. "Before I ran away, I told her what I was planning. She was my best friend, and I had to confide in somebody. I wanted someone to know where I was headed, even if I made that person swear never to tell anyone where I was going. I knew Khalila was strong enough to keep my secret even if they tried to beat it out of her, although I doubted that they would try to do that, since I did my best to make it look like I had snuffed it in the desert. She understands how important my cover is to me, and she would never risk it by attempting to contact me unless she felt that she had to warn me about a major threat."

"What major threat would that be?" Zahir demanded coldly, arching an eyebrow. As long as he acted disinterested, he reassured himself, no trouble would bother to seek out him or his loved ones. Surely, danger only found those who went looking for it. Certainly nothing would ever try to intimidate him when his whole bearing made it clear that he wasn't going to be scared by anything. "Has her straight hair started to curl?"

"You can only joke because your head is still on," snapped Aisha. "In the current political climate in the desert, perhaps you should be grateful that it is still on, although if you don't watch out for yourself, it might not be attached to your neck much longer. According to Khalila, all over the desert, groups of men are taking the law into their own hands. They're killing off those they suspect of crimes like adultery and depositing the victims' bodies in public places. They're kidnapping and torturing women who aren't deferential enough to their husbands. They're cutting out the tongues of boys who dare to shout at their fathers. They're disfiguring the faces of girls whose veils are too colorful or whose skirts are an inch too high. They're beheading men who drink or smoke. Tell me, Zahir, if they're maiming girls who are wearing veils that, for whatever reason, aren't modest enough, what will they do to a girl who isn't wearing one at all?"

"You're talking nonsense," Zahir growled, trying not to think about the oppressive atmosphere that had hovered like a thunderhead over the Sandrunner tribe and refusing to imagine the gory punishment that Aisha or Cait might face from some radical Bazhir elements for not donning veils. "How can I respond to that?"

"You wish I were talking nonsense," Aisha corrected him grimly. "Yet, you know as well as I do that Khalila isn't given to histrionics. If she says it is awful here, the worst portions of the afterlife have nothing on this place. Still, if you don't believe me, ask her for yourself. I'm sure she'll be happy to convince you of the truth you're too stubborn to accept from me."

"I will go see her," Zahir declared, as he turned to leave. He would not believe that a reign of terror was sweeping across his beloved homeland until he had not only seen the proof with his own eyes but heard the truth from the lips of someone who had watched the brutal repression develop—always gathering destructive power—like a sandstorm for months.

"Wait." Abruptly, Aisha grasped his wrist, halting him. For a few seconds, she only looked at him, saying nothing. Zahir was about to twist out of her grip when she choked out, in the rough voice of those unused to offering apologies, "Zahir, I'm sorry about how I behaved at the seashore. It's just that I can't bear the thought of not being able to see Laila and the others, especially when the world is so dangerous, and I'm afraid that if any of them do anything that some fanatic finds offensive, they could all be killed. Of course, they don't even have to do anything wrong to get murdered. If anybody finds out who I am, my whole family could be punished as a way of getting revenge on me."

"None of us are going to die." Zahir's gaze lanced into his younger sister's. "Stop acting like we're all on death's door."

"This place is going to be the death of me." Tears welling in her eyes, Aisha shook her head. "I can feel it."

"You feel nothing of the sort," said Zahir, grabbing her shoulders and giving her a slight shake. "You've already managed to escape death in the desert once. Why shouldn't you be able to do it twice?"

"Because I can't always cheat death." As if all the life had already faded from her, Aisha sagged into his arms, resting her head against his chest, and whispering, "Are you afraid to die, Zahir?"

"No," replied Zahir bluntly, patting his sister on the back. "Actually, that is one thing I don't worry about very much. It is my job to live with honor, to defend Tortall, to fight for justice, to serve the Bazhir, to obey my king, and to look out for those I love. My death—" his mouth quirked into a little, dark smile—"is somebody else's responsibility."

"I guess that's how I feel, too," muttered Aisha, pulling away from him, and a surge of relief coursed through him. He loved his sister, but he hated having her pressed up against his heart, so that the terror blazing inside her burned into him. He didn't want to face her fear that she could be kidnapped, wounded, or killed. The idea that she, like him, could be at the mercy of her own fear was too horrible for him to accept, so he pushed away the thought of her anguished face, assuring himself that he had not glimpsed her vulnerability. Aisha could not be vanquished. She could not be taken. She could not be hurt. She could not be killed. The core of her was strength, and Zahir could keep them both safe. "I'm sorry for acting like such a jerk."

"You always act like a jerk, and I always forgive you without you having to ask, so why should now be any different?" Zahir teased, trying to irritate her, because he preferred her anger to her fear.

"This is the part of the conversation where I say that I would love to throw you a going-away party." Aisha kicked him in the shins with far more ferocity than he thought his joke at her expense warranted. "First, you have to do your part and go away, though."

"I'm leaving." Lifting his nose into the air haughtily, Zahir marched out of the tent. Once the flaps had smacked shut behind him and the sentries, who might have assumed him mentally unstable if they overhead him muttering to himself, were out of earshot, he grumbled, "Everyone always talks about violence against women. No one ever mentions violence against men. That can only be because it is so commonplace that it isn't worth discussing."

This statement alleviated all of his remaining annoyance with Aisha for assaulting his innocent shins, which had never, to his knowledge, harmed her in any fashion. Now that his irritation had evaporated into the growing heat of the day, Zahir glanced around, as if hoping to spot a signpost pointing him toward the tent belonging to Khalila's father.

Unsurprisingly, he didn't see any such sign, and, unfortunately, from the outside, the beige and tan tents all looked practically identical. All in all, he supposed that finding Khalila's tent in the midst of the Sandrunner tribe would be even more challenging than uncovering the proverbial needle in a haystack. After all, at least the needle in the ancient adage looked different from the hay surrounding it…

Frustration was beginning to boil inside Zahir when he saw a woman garbed in black from her hair down to her feet returning from the oasis with a clay jar of water balanced upon her head. He was about to call out to her, asking if she knew where Waahid ibn Chidi's tent was located, when a certain well-concealed limp in her gait made him instead shout hesitantly, employing the Bazhir equivalent for madam that sounded heavier on his tongue than it should have, "Saydati Inaya?"

Khalila's mother, Inaya, had fallen off her mare when she was pregnant with Khalila, and she had walked with a slight limp ever since, but any number of middle-aged Sandrunner women could have a similar gait, after all.

"My chief." Saydati Inaya inclined her head as deeply as she could with a water jar perched upon it. "I heard that you were to come with the Voice."

"Now I have arrived." Zahir smiled, walking beside her as she continued to move down the sandy lane.

"Sayyd Waahid is not home at the moment," she told him, ushering him inside a tent at the end of the row of beige and tan tents. "He is meeting with some friends from other tribes. He should be back in an hour or two, gods willing. If you would like, you may make yourself comfortable here until he returns, when I'm sure he'll be glad to speak with you, or you can attend to other business for two hours or so and then come back to speak with him."

"Saydati, my business today isn't with Sayyd Waahid, but with Anissa Khalila," responded Zahir, noting with some relief that his tongue was managing to roll out the syllables for the Bazhir words for sir and miss with more ease than it had the one for the Bazhir equivalent of madam. His eyes falling upon the slender adolescent girl clad from top to bottom in black, who was steadily weaving a blanket in the corner, he added, "If she is free, I would enjoy speaking with your daughter."

"I'm told that I'm a slave to the gods only, Zahir ibn Alhaz." Khalila bowed her head and kept her gaze riveted upon her loom. "I daresay that makes me as free as anybody. What is it you which to talk to me about?"

"It's a rather—er—personal matter." Unbidden, a flush rose to his cheeks as he turned to Inaya. Aware that he sounded as though he were trying to court Khalila even though that was not his intention at all, he continued awkwardly, "If possible, I would like to speak with your daughter alone, Saydati."

"With all due respect, my chief, I'm not sure that it would be proper for my unmarried daughter to be alone with any as yet unwed young man." Inaya frowned at him. "Truly, I think it would be better for both your reputation and my daughter's if you allowed me to act as chaperone over your conversation."

"Ummi, don't be silly," said Khalila before Zahir could reply, using the affectionate term for mother and still not sparing so much as a glance upon Zahir. "Zahir and I have tortured each other ever since Aisha and I became friends. He's basically a brother to me. It would be positively disgusting if either of us felt the remotest attraction to the other."

"Childhood feelings can change when a person reaches adulthood," Inaya commented, shaking her head. "Suddenly, playmates can start looking like good mates if you take my meaning."

"I know that you wish to marry me off soon, but must your desire to see me wed color every interaction I have with the opposite gender?" Sighing, Khalila rolled her eyes at what she doubtlessly perceived as her mother's folly and adjusted her loom, as if she didn't have time to squander on what was currently a pointless conversation.

"It's not just me who will see something in you talking alone with Zahir," blustered Inaya. "Khalila, you may know that there is nothing romantic going on between you and Zahir, but the rest of the world doesn't."

"I'm not going to let a bunch of lunatics and perverts who see sex behind every closed tent flap forever dictate what I do inside my own tent," Khalila hissed. "My chief asked to have a private word with me, and I will grant his request. If you will permit it, I will talk to him alone here, or, if you won't, he and I can go for a ride in the desert together. I'm sure _that_ would attract much less notice than just sitting with him here would. Of course, even if the lunatics and perverts did hear about my private conference with Zahir, they might very well be happy about it. After all, I'm a Bazhir girl, and they would probably be relieved to see that he was now interested in a Bazhir girl rather than a northern warrior woman."

"I'm just looking out for your welfare, you foolish and insolent girl. You might show some appreciation for that." Inaya pursed her lips together for a long moment before scooping up a basket of vegetables, conceding grudgingly, "I suppose that I can slice these up outside for a half hour or so. Be warned, however, that if I hear anything that sounds the slightest bit improper, I will come back inside immediately."

"Understood, Ummi," murmured Khalila.

"Thank you, Saydati," Zahir added, as Inaya bustled out of the tent, her anxious eyes suggesting that leaving Zahir alone with her beloved only daughter violated every aspect of her better judgment. "Rest assured that your daughter is safe with me."

"I hope so." As she established as much through tight lips, Inaya yanked the flaps shut in her wake with a snap.

Inaya's disapproving departure filled the tent for a moment. Then Khalila stood in one smooth motion and crossed over to the cackling fire, over which hung a pot of tea. As she took the silver pot away from the fire, she nodded her head at a low acacia wood table, her every motion as graceful as a gazelle's, saying, "Please be seated, Zahir. I'll have a cup of tea ready for you in the shake of a lamb's tail."

"Khalila, what did you mean when you said to your mother that people would be happy to hear that I was interested in a Bazhir girl instead of a northern warrior woman?" Zahir demanded in a rush, kneeling down on the soft rug underneath the table.

Shooting him a sidelong look as she placed a steaming teacup in front of Zahir, Khalila remarked, "Rumor has it that you are courting a northern woman in the Queen's Riders. You should know that you created quite a stir amongst the Bazhir when you, despite the Voice's urging that you wed her, refused to marry Nasira bint Mahmud. I mean, half of our tribe had seen you getting all dewy-eyed over her at intertribal feats, so everybody expected you to jump at the chance to have her as your bride. When you didn't, people naturally started speculating as to why you weren't enamored of Nasira any longer. At first, everybody assumed that it was because she was—to phrase it as crassly as possible—used goods. To be blunt, people could understand why you would feel as dirty as a goat in the mud if you slept with someone your cousin had already lain with. Really, it was only when a Bazhir merchant returned from the Royal Palace a few weeks after your arrival in Corus with news that you had been seen kissing a Rider girl in the gardens that all the Bazhir began whispering that you hadn't wanted to marry Nasira because you were infatuated with some northern warrior woman. Naturally, once they started whispering about you and your northern girl, they couldn't stop, and, let me tell you, the kindest phrase used for your northern girl is 'warrior woman.'"

"People can be so judgmental." Scowling, Zahir fiddled with the handle of his cup of tea.

"Well, non-judgmental people can become quite judgmental themselves when dealing with judgmental people." Khalila smirked, sipping her tea daintily. "Anyway, I'm sure you didn't come to speak with me about a piece of gossip that you apparently didn't know was circling among the Bazhir like some dreadful ailment, so what did you want to talk with me about?"

"I wanted to know if things were as bad as you described in your letter to our mutual friend," Zahir burst out, barely remembering in time not to make it sound as if Aisha were still alive by employing her name. "I had to find out if you were exaggerating to make life here seem more interesting."

"Oh, I wish I were exaggerating," stated Khalila fervently. "Things here are worse than how I described them in my note to our mutual friend. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't find the right words to explain all the horrors happening in our homeland. Words can't describe the terror we're all living under here. Everyone is afraid of walking, talking, or even breathing for fear that they might do something to offend those who have taken enforcing the law into their own hands. Nobody can speak out against the madness, because anyone who protests the new rule by radicals will probably be forced to watch their family tortured and killed before suffering a painful death themselves. No one thinks of their tent as private anymore, since if a man so much as smokes his pipe at the table, the radicals will hear about it, and might decide to do something perfectly rational like set him on fire."

Here, Khalila choked on her own bitterness for a minute. Then, tears gleaming like stars in the midnight sky in her eyes, she whispered, "What gives radicals the right to terrorize everyone, anyway? By what authority do they reinvent the laws? What makes them think that the gods only speak to them and not the rest of us mortals? What justification could they possibly have for sapping all the beauty, life, and goodness from the desert?"

"They can't do any of that, Khalila, because they don't have the authority to do so." His jaw clenching, Zahir squeezed his teacup so tightly that he was vaguely impressed that it didn't shatter into a hundred shards under the pressure.

"Oh, you haven't been here. Apparently, they've given themselves that authority, and they've already done more of it than you would like to imagine, believe me." Darkly, Khalila shook her head. "What is even worse is that our tribe is safer than many others. Some tribes have chiefs who are rumored to be leaders of the radical elements, but no one can accuse Hassan of such a thing. He is a conservative, and he demands that people live virtuously, but he wants them to live—he doesn't think people should be killed for anything but the gravest crimes against the gods and society. He is more concerned with what people should be doing rather than what they shouldn't be doing. I bet that fact alone makes him unpopular with the radical factions."

"Hearing all this is giving me a headache." Zahir tore at his hair and was rather shocked that clumps of it didn't rip off into his fists. "You don't suppose that our mutual friend would be safe here even if I made it clear that she had my permission to pursue the career path she has chosen for herself?"

"Nobody can be safe here any longer, Zahir ibn Alhaz." Khalila's tone was as cool as an ocean breeze. "If you had been listening to me, you would have understood that. You would also have understood that, while the radical groups among the Bazhir may claim to respect the traditional power of the head of a family, in reality, the authority of any given head of a family exists only as long as that head of family doesn't make any decisions of which the radical elements disapprove. If the head of a family makes a decision contrary to the beliefs of the radical groups, that head of family and possibly the entire family will be punished severely. The radicals only care about their interpretation of Bazhir laws and sacred texts, not about anyone else's."

"I am a Bazhir chief and the candidate for the next Voice," snarled Zahir, a vein throbbing in his neck. "I know more about sacred texts and Bazhir law than they ever will. I wager that they never had dreams where they were inside the first Voice's head, but I have. Until they've experienced visions passed down to them from the first Voice, they can stop acting like they understand the first Voice's will better than I do."

"For your information, the fact that you're the candidate for the next Voice is the main reason that the radical elements developed in the first place." Khalila shot him a frigidly condescending glare, as though he should have comprehended this without her having to explain it to him. "Many Bazhir were never exactly enthusiastic about having a northern king—especially a progressive one who promoted warrior women—as Voice. They were quite happy to hear that King Jonathan was planning to train a Bazhir to replace him as Voice. When those Bazhir learned that it was you, who had lived in the north for so many years, who was to be the next Voice, they started to grumble discontentedly among themselves. They wished for a Bazhir who had never lived anywhere besides the desert to be the next Voice. They hoped for a Bazhir who was older and more experienced to be the leader of the tribes. They wanted someone who had never been exposed to northern decadence to be their spiritual father. Certainly, they didn't want a future knight who would be bound by oaths of fealty to the northern king to be their next Voice. That would seem to subjugate the Bazhir to the northerners to an unacceptable degree."

"We can't turn back time." Zahir glowered at her. "Now that we've made contact with the northerners, we have to deal with them even if we don't wish to do so. In order to deal with them, we have to understand them, so that they can have a chance of understanding us. Don't keel over in alarm, but it is difficult to understand the crazy ways of the northerners if you haven't lived among them for years as I have."

"People fear that you have embraced those crazy northerner ways," Khalila educated him, her manner as dry as the wind that often swept across the desert. "They say that the fact that you are in love with a northern warrior woman proves that. They argue that a boy who was still connected to his Bazhir heritage would never dream of contaminating his lineage by mating with a northerner. They insist that a Bazhir lad with a respect for our customs would never even envision marrying a woman who was more focused on making war than on mastering the elusive art of making a perfect home for her future husband. They claim that any young man who doesn't understand a woman's holy role as a wife and mother can't comprehend the nature of his own gender either, and, as such, isn't fit to rule the Bazhir. Oh, and they also accuse you of being King Jonathan's stooge, so that, through you, King Jonathan can finally finish conquering the desert for his grandfather Jasson."

"They don't understand that Cait is willing to give up the Riders to become a proper Bazhir wife and mother." Desperately, Zahir ran his fingers through his hair before asking, "You don't believe a word of that bile you just spewed, do you, Khalila?"

"I don't know what or who to believe any more." Khalila emitted a laugh that contained far more hysteria than humor. "I just know that, if I were your Cait, I wouldn't try to become a Bazhir, because, as long as she is a northerner, she can't be harmed for her unconventional behavior, but the instant that she starts attempting to be a Bazhir, she could be. I also know that if my mother and father didn't need me to make a good marriage so that they would be supported in their old age, I would disappear like our mutual friend did. In fact, if I didn't think that my escape would devastate my parents, who can't have any more children given my mother's years, I would be gone now."

"You want to be a Rider, too?" gasped Zahir, astonished, since, while Khalila had always been as vivacious as Aisha, she had always been more obsessed with gossiping and weaving than horseback riding and archery.

"No, I would like to learn how to be a lady in one of their convents." A smile flicked across Khalila's face for the first time. "I would love to wear a bright red silk dress, so that I could hear the fabric whisk through the air around my ankles. For once, I would like to don a gown that reveals some of my cleavage, because I have some of that, and I wouldn't mind showing off a bit of it before it gets saggy or I die. I want to cast of my veil, so my hair can glisten in the candlelight before family and strangers alike. I want to dance, twirling from partner to partner in a fancy ballroom and having the night of my life. In short, I want to feel graceful and beautiful like the northern ladies feel when they debut at court." Her gaze wistful as she imagined being a dancing queen at a northern ball, Khalila murmured, "Honestly, I don't know how your Rider girl could bear to surrender the north for the desert."

"My Rider girl probably feels the desert is as exotic as you think the north is." Zahir snorted. Then, his manner softening, he went on, "Anyhow, northern women don't feel beautiful or graceful when they debut at court. They feel like they are being paraded before an audience that will turn everything about them and their bodies into a flaw. Northern ladies spend their lives worrying that their clothes are the wrong color, their breasts are too big or too small, their hips are too wide or too narrow, their faces aren't the right shape, their feet are too big, and their hair is too curly or too straight. Showing off their bodies doesn't make them happy. It makes them miserable. Like you, they won't be pleased with themselves until they don't need anyone to tell them that they are beautiful and graceful. Why you need anybody to tell you that you are beautiful and graceful is beyond me, though, since it is so obvious that you are the definition of beauty and grace."

"You're lying to me," Khalila accused him, pressing her lips together.

"Unlike most men, I never lie, especially to pretty girls." Finally, Zahir took a gulp of his tea, which was spicer than most northern brews, and ignited small fires in his throat and chest.

"Now I know that you're lying, but, as long as I think that the northern women are miserable, I can deal with my lot in life." Khalila giggled. "As a little girl, I envied Aisha because she had an older brother like you. When we were young, you seemed like the best brother in the world."

"Aisha would disagree with you." Zahir snickered. "She probably thinks that I'm the worst brother in the world."

"Yes." Cheekiness emanated from Khalila now. "That's why I said that you seemed like the best brother in the world, not that you actually were the best brother in the world."

"This love fest has gone on quite long enough, my dears," clucked Inaya reproachfully as she hastened into the tent and carried the basket of now cut vegetables over to the corner by the fire.

"Of course, Saydati." Politely, Zahir ducked his head. "My business with your daughter is over. I'll be going along to my brother-in-law Hassan's tent now if you'll just tell me where to find it."

"It's three tents down on the next row to our left." Khalila answered before her mother could. "Anyway, Zahir, now that you are among the Bazhir, you really should get into the habit of saying 'gods willing' whenever you announce that you are planning to do something."

"I don't see why the gods wouldn't will me to visit Hassan and Laila," scoffed Zahir, who thought that the phrase "gods willing" seemed like a cumbersome addition to sentences now that he had adapted to the northern presumption that people could control their days. Many Bazhir might have liked the reminder that the gods had different wills than mortals and that the gods could send a person down a path that individual never could have foreseen, but, given the fact that Zahir was fighting to realize his dream of marrying Cait, he didn't wish to get into the habit of admitting that he could not dictate his destiny.

"There are many things I couldn't imagine the gods willing until Haashim ibn Ghaazi and his radicals explained the gods' wills to a simpleton like me," pointed out Khalila wryly. "Mere mortals like you and me should not presume to comprehend the ways of the omniscient and omnipotent gods. We should leave that to wise, honorable men like Haashim ibn Ghaazi."

"On that joyful note, I'll take my leave." Snorting, Zahir shoved himself to his feet. "Good day, Saydati Inaya and Anissa Khalila."

With a bow, Zahir left the tent, closing the flaps softly behind him. Following Khalila's directions, he walked to the end of the lane, and then turned down the next row of tents. Immediately, a tent he recognized as Hassan's came into view.

His heart soaring, Zahir raced over to the tent. Not bothering to shout out a warning that he was entering, he burst through the flaps into a home that smelled of spice, jasmine, and the people he loved.


	57. Chapter 57

Author's Note: I apologize for the delay in posting. Due to Hurricane Irene, I lost electricity for a couple of days, and I have just started college again, so my update rate will depend on just how evil this semester's professors are feeling.

Where the Heart is

"Zahir!" exclaimed Laila, dropping the flatbread dough she was kneading onto the cypress table in astonishment. Before she could say anything else, however, her breath had escaped her in a whoosh, for Zahir had raced across the main room of the tent and engulfed her in a suffocating embrace.

Anyone else might have shoved him away, muttering about his perverse desire to crack the ribs and smash the lungs of the few family members he had left. Laila, though, was different than everyone else, and she not only silently accepted his squeezing hug, but wrapped her arms around him.

Pressed against her chest, he could feel her heart pulsing in unison with his, and that was how he knew he was truly home. The pounding of her heart had the same rhythm as his, because she shared his flesh and blood, which meant that she was a part of him and he her. Now, if only he could take a perfect memory of her softness and love with him forever as a talisman, but that was impossible. Memories were never perfect. All of them were able to be corrupted by time.

"I missed you," he murmured, pulling away from her.

"Just as I have missed you," she answered, patting his cheek with the tender palm of her hand, her eyes as warm as heated molasses. "It is a joy to see you again."

"Welcome home," added Hassan, who had been polishing a knife in the corner of the tent when Zahir had dashed unceremoniously inside. While Zahir had been hugging Laila, Hassan had carefully set down the blade and the polishing ointment. Now, he was striding over to Zahir, his hand outstretched.

"I'm sorry for dropping in without warning," said Zahir, his sense of decorum returning to him with a jolt as he shook his brother-in-law's hand.

"We heard that the Voice had arrived, so we assumed that it wouldn't be long before you stopped by to see us," Hassan replied, clapping Zahir's shoulder. "Think nothing of it."

"We did suppose that you would announce your presence before running into our tent, though." The tone was cold as any ice cap and sour as a lemon. There was no need for Zahir to see whom it belonged to, because he already knew that it was his mother, Jaseena, who had spoken so acerbically to him. She had always gone through life with an attitude of chronic disapproval and contempt for practically anyone and anything she encountered, or at least she had since Zahir had been born to her.

As he spun around to face her, he thought that her mouth now seemed frozen in a contortion of disgust that suggested she had just swallowed a piece of rancid lamb. Frown lines carved into her cheeks revealed that grief for her lost husband and for Aisha had only made her sharper around the edges.

"I assure you, boy, that Hassan may not care if you burst into a private tent without permission, but I do," she continued waspishly. "Your father and I raised you to display more manners than a wild horse in a stampede. It must be the northern influence upon you. Your father always said that northerners were lax about discipline. I bet nobody has troubled to take a stick to you since your father—bless his departed soul—passed on to his reward in the afterlife."

"Greetings, Umm." Zahir smiled slightly. Once he would have been cowed or angered by her reprimand, but, because he had known Trevor, he could look upon his mother and see her as she truly was. He could see her hunched back and stooped shoulders, which were the ruins of a once proud woman. He could see the frail bones, thin flesh, and vacant eyes that had only bitterness and malice to sustain, support, and fill them. When he saw all that, he couldn't feel fear or anger toward her. All he could feel was pity over her wasted life and energy. "I must really be home if you are scolding me again."

"Don't take such a frivolous tone when your elders take you to task for your frightfully uncouth behavior." A series of resounding clanks from the loom on which his mother was weaving a carpet punctuated her words like pebbles hurled into an already turbulent pond. "Now come here and give me a hug. I'm much too old to be getting up to greet you, you know."

Dutifully, wishing that he could summon up a real love for her, Zahir approached his mother and flung his arms around her slumped shoulders, feeling her bony arms sweep around his strong, lean back.

Barely a second after her arms had enfolded him, she pushed him away from her and began scrutinizing him with eyes that managed to be beady and rheumy at the same time.

"You're still as skinny as a tent pole," Jaseena grunted, her scowl deepening with dissatisfaction at his appearance. "No doubt that's because you still refuse to eat all your vegetables if someone isn't standing over you with a rod. Of course, with your tendency to steal desserts, it's a marvel you don't weigh five times what you do now. I hope you stop growing soon, too, or you'll start looking like an ogre."

"I've been told by many people that I am quite handsome," he informed her, reminding himself that he wasn't ugly even if his own mother hated his looks. Cait thought he was handsome, and that should be enough to keep him happy all his days.

"Obviously, they were blind, lying, or trying not to bruise your delicate ego," snorted Jaseena, her loom clacking as she resumed her weaving. "Well, at least I know why your head is so big."

"Since we've covered in great detail how I'm doing, why don't you tell me how you are feeling, Umm?" Zahir suggested, deciding that now was an impeccable time for a subject change.

"I'm not as young as I once was." His mother shook her head as if he had been foolish enough to state that she was aging backward. "My bones creak with every move, but still I must work. My eyes grow dim and my vision blurs, but I continue to be eyes for my blind children. My skin hangs loose from my bones, but still I eat less than you probably do. My hands tremble, but I continue to thread needles. Is there anything else you want to know?"

"No, Umm." Zahir shook his head, thinking that he had no yearning to listen to whatever else she could find to gripe about.

"Ummi," Laila cut in, her features a study in distress, which indicated that she still hadn't figured out that their mother only felt powerful when she was complaining about somebody or something. Jassena was only happy when miserable. "Please. You know that all the food Hassan and I have is yours. Feel free to eat your fill. Don't work if it drains you. Hassan and I will provide for you."

"Don't be silly." Jaseena's glower fixed on Laila now. "You must provide for your children, girl, not me."

"We can care for you and the babies," Laila assured her mildly. Then, glancing at her brother, she asked, "Do you want to meet your niece and nephew?"

"Oh, yes." His heart hammering excitedly against his ribcage, Zahir followed his older sister over to two baskets beside the fire.

Collapsing onto knees that abruptly felt as wobbly as his mother's, Zahir knelt in front of the baskets. Swathed in a pink wool blanket, a girl with a button nose, olive skin as smooth as a cloudless Midwinter night, and a nimbus of black, beautiful hair on her head, lay. Next to her, bundled in a blue woolen blanket, was her brother, who shared her dark skin, her gleaming black eyes, and her tufts of dark hair, but who had inherited the proud nose that Zahir himself had.

Breaking into a grin, Zahir found himself gazing down upon Amaya and Taymur with the loving reverence that a pilgrim might display when genuflecting before the relics of a demigod. When he stared into the innocent, trusting eyes of his little niece and nephew, he discovered that, just for a moment, he contained all the potential that bubbled inside them and that he, like the babies, could achieve all his craziest dreams.

As he drank in the sight of the infants, he felt like all the many miles he had traveled had been erased, so that it was as if he had never left his home. In his life, he had cried so many tears both on the inside and on the outside, but, when he gazed into the faces of his sister's babies, he realized with awe that these two children had managed to wash even the memory of those tears away. Through the eyes of his niece and nephew, he was transported back in time, so that he could be a child, too, for awhile.

Maybe everyone who looked upon a baby underwent a similar transformation, he thought. After all, every strong father and every kind mother was created by nothing more than a child. Babies, he concluded, were miracles. They were reminders that life, despite all the tremendous suffering it inevitably entailed, really was a blessing—the greatest gift anyone could receive, since, without it, no other presents were possible.

"They're perfect," whispered Zahir, holding out a finger to each of the babies and beaming when a gentle palm clenched tightly around each of his extended fingers.

"You only think that because you haven't heard them cry yet," Hassan, who had crossed over to stand behind Laila, commented, twisting his face into an expression of exaggerated distaste. Watching their father, Taymur and Amaya quirked their lips into what might have been the beginnings of smiles. "Right now, they seem all innocent, but they are quite the temperamental tyrants, I assure you. If you want to sleep, they clamor to be fed. If you hope to eat, they demand to be held. If you actually wish to hold them, they scream to be put down. They also never want the same thing as one another. I think they have some private, twin method of communication that the rest of us don't stand a chance of comprehending."

"I have presents for them." As Amaya relinquished his finger, so that she could wave her fist around as triumphantly as a conquering general, Zahir fumbled inside his pocket. A second later, he took out a doll and a horse, both of which he had carved and painted himself since Midwinter.

He felt a surge of pride in his creative abilities when his hand brushed over the pieces of wood that he had carefully smoothed to the point where they could no more have given splinters than have ruled a country. The paint jobs on the horse and doll were also remarkably competent, he determined, considering that he had never attempted to paint anything before. On a whole, he would have made a decent carpenter. At least he had another career option if the knight, and Voice plans failed.

"What beautiful gifts." Delight radiating from her, Laila bent to kiss him on the cheek, as Taymur released his finger. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. It was my pleasure to make these toys," Zahir responded, grinning as he held out the doll to Amaya, who snatched it out of his hand, clenched it in her tiny fist, brought it to her lips, and began sucking on its head. When he gave the horse to Taymur, the boy seized the toy and shook it up and down like a rattle.

Thinking that he hadn't really expected Amaya and Taymur to use the toys he gave them as objects with a function that went beyond sucking or shaking, Zahir smiled down at them for a moment longer.

Then, spinning his head around to face Hassan, he remarked, "I understand that Taymur is named after your father, but I don't know why you called Amaya what you did. It's a rather uncommon name. Did you just like the sound of it?"

"He named the girl Amaya because insanity runs in his family," grumbled Jaseena from behind her loom. "Night rain. What an ugly name with an even more hideous meaning, if that's possible. I suggested something sensible like Khadijah or Aasima, but he insisted on Amaya."

Zahir stifled the impulse to point out to his mother that he had addressed Hassan, not her, as Hassan said, "To be honest, I always pictured water as a symbol of the gods' grace, because water nourishes us and without water we couldn't be. Sometimes we have to walk far to reach the water, and occasionally, we have to work for a bucket of it. Other times, on truly rare occasions, water just pours from the sky, and, no matter where you are standing or what you are doing, you get drenched to the bone. Amaya is that purifying, refreshing rain."

"I see." Zahir nodded, even though he wasn't at all sure he understood.

"Now, you've asked enough stupid questions," rapped out his mother, tugging sharply on the fabric she was weaving. "I want you to tell me about this northern girl you are seeing."

"How do you even know that I'm seeing a northern girl, Umm?" Zahir's eyes narrowed reflexively. "Have you been listening to gossip about me?"

"I must listen to rumors because your letter home don't tell me much about what is going on inside that thick skull of yours." Jaseena's lips thinned. "Anyhow, I notice that you don't deny the gossip about you seeing some northern slut."

"I never had any relationship with a northern slut." Zahir's jaw tightened so much he was shocked that it didn't creak in protest of this rough treatment. "I am dating a northern girl named Cait, however."

"Then I suggest that you take your brain out of your backside long enough to dump her." His mother snorted. "All northern women are sluts. That's why they dance and don't veil themselves. Of course, even if they weren't all whores, no northern wench would be worth you marrying, because they are all hopelessly ill-suited for Bazhir men. The delicate court ladies would faint in a day if they were expected to live and work here, and they would throw a fit if they weren't allowed to wear all their revealing gowns and nausea-inducing perfumes. Then, the few girls who aren't ruined by northern convents are those who are so masculine that you can't help but wonder if they even realize that they are females, running around fighting and riding like men, never learning to cook, clean, or raise children. Northern women are all either frail little butterflies or men with women's plumbing. They aren't like Bazhir women, who know how to be strong, beautiful, and ladylike. The desert doesn't allow weaklings or gender-confused buffoons to survive."

"There are plenty of strong northern women who spend their days performing back-breaking labor in their husbands' fields, or working in the palace kitchens and laundries." Zahir shook his head. "You've never been to the north. How can you judge an entire race of people that you've had almost no contact with?"

"I can judge them by the immorality that they permit to swallow their land," spat Jaseena, slamming her foot down on her loom, which clanked loudly enough to make the tent tremble. "They let women be warriors. They let girls roam around without veils. They have a noble class that abuses and seldom serves the vast majority of the population."

"That's a caricature of life in the north, Umm." Zahir bristled. "If you traveled to the north, you would learn the truth."

"No, I might drown in a sea of lies, as you have, boy." His mother bore down on the loom again, so that the tent shook once more. "The north is close, but there is no reason why anyone would want to go there. Its people are weak and immoral—"

"Meet Cait," Zahir interrupted earnestly. "Then you'll understand that's not true."

"I don't ever want to meet some northern slut," snarled Jaseena, her face crimson with fury. "It's an insult to this family that you would think it acceptable to engage in a relationship with some Rider whore, but it's even worse that you would have the audacity to suggest that we become acquainted with her, as if the little slattern were a fit partner for you."

"I do intend to marry her." Zahir lifted his chin resolutely. "With all due respect, Umm, it is only my opinion that matters as to whether she will be a fit partner, and I happen to believe that she will."

"You arrogant young coxcomb," shrieked Jaseena, pointing a quivering finger attached to a varicose hand at him. "Your father would have skinned you alive for dismissing me like this. He certainly would have disowned you, too, for even thinking that you could marry a piece of northern trash instead of a proper daughter of a Bazhir chief—"

"He didn't marry a Bazhir chief's daughter," hissed Zahir, glaring at his mother. "If he can marry for love, Umm, I can do the same."

"Marry for love," Jaseena snapped. "I hope you enjoy being killed in the middle of the night by a bunch of vigilantes for it. Maybe it will also bring you pleasure as you suffer a gruesome end to imagine your family slain as punishment for your crime of marrying a northern slut. Pick your family—your own flesh and blood- or a northern whorish warrior woman who can offer you only the basest pleasures of the flesh. Make your choice, and may Mithros damn you to the worst portion of the afterlife if you decide that home isn't where your heart is."

"Umm," Laila cut in, her voice barely audible over the wailing of Amaya and Taymur. As Zahir flushed with the realization that he was such a terrible uncle that he hadn't even detected when exactly he had started to make his young niece and nephew cry, Laila, who was cradling a baby in each arm, continued, "Please don't use so much coarse language in front of the children."

"I'll speak how I want, girl." Jaseena's eyes sparked with wrath. "It's not like the babies will understand a word that I'm saying."

"They understand the tone well enough, Umm," insisted Laila quietly. "Yelling upsets them. Again, I kindly request that you don't—"

"You want to know what upsets me, girl?" demanded Jaseena, scowling at her grandchildren. Distantly, Zahir observed that she alone seemed unaffected by the miracle that each of the babies was. Perhaps, he thought, her love of children had been poisoned by conceiving one outside of wedlock. A judgmental and unsympathetic society, obviously, could crush all but the most resilient spirits, and could tear apart families even while professing to value them above all else. "The endless waterworks of your wretched children. I don't know how many times I've told you to just slap their rumps when they start wailing like this, but you won't listen. Hitting is the only way to get through with the little brats that children are. It's especially important to beat boys, because they are so hard-headed that their wills can only be broken by regular application of the rod. Alhaz and I were always in agreement about that. Really, if you would just listen to me, we would all have much fewer headaches. "

"I do listen, but listening doesn't make me agree with you, Umm," Laila countered levelly, kissing first Amaya and then Taymur on the cheek. "Since they can't speak, babies communicate by crying, and beating them for talking in the only way they know how feels wrong to me. Anyway, even if they could speak, I don't think that hitting children who crave comfort, like Amaya and Taymur do right now, is the best way to deal with things. Naturally, you are welcome to disagree with me, but Hassan and I will raise our babies in the manner we believe is best."

"Ah, well, if you believe it is best, I have no doubt that you are right." Jaseena sneered. "After all, I'm quite sure that I learned nothing by raising three children."

Laila opened her mouth to reply, but Hassan interjected in a firm tone, "Umm Jaseena, you've mentioned several times in the past couple of days that you are cold in the nights. Why don't you and Laila go out and buy some wool for a new blanket for you?"

"It's a relief to know that you aren't so stingy that you would make your own mother sign a requisition form for water if she were dying of thirst," remarked Zahir's mother dryly, as she removed a handful of coins from a jar beside the fire, offering the closest she could to a statement of gratitude or praise.

A few moments later, a Laila had entrusted the still sobbing babies to Hassan, the two women left the tent, the flaps smacking shut behind them, to find a bolt of wool that would please Jaseena enough for her to be willing to make it into a blanket for herself.

"They'll be gone for at least an hour," Zahir commented once he was confident that his mother, whose sharp hearing along with her biting tongue probably had not decayed as she aged, was out of earshot. "Most likely, she'll find something seriously wrong with every piece of wool. The one she purchases will just be the one with, in her opinion, the least amount of terrible defects."

"When people grow older, they have the right to expect that their family will ensure that they are comfortable," said Hassan mildly.

"My mother doesn't want to be comfortable, and she doesn't want to let anyone else be either." The bitter words spilled out of Zahir's mouth before he could stop them. "She doesn't love anybody, and if she looks after a person, she does so resentfully, complaining about doing so the entire time."

"Your mother does love people." Hassan's eyes locked on Zahir's. "She loves your father, and she wants his memory to be honored. She loves your sisters and you. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been for her to entrust her only son to a strange race she didn't know or trust?"

"She and Father chose to send me off to be trained as a knight in the north." Zahir's jaw set. "I never asked to be shipped off to the northerners. It was their decision for me to be raised among the northern nobility, but I suppose that it's really comforting for her to think that all of the many flaws she sees in me come from the northerners. Certainly, she and her dearly departed husband are not to blame for any of my faults. Nothing could possibly be wrong with their parenting abilities or with Bazhir culture. It's all the northerners who are to blame. I bet she'd agree with many of the radicals who have taken control of the desert on that matter."

"She also had to watch her husband suffer a painful death after his own brother attacked him," Hassan went on, ignoring Zahir's derisive commentary. "Then, not long after her spouse was murdered, she lost her youngest daughter to the desert. All in all, I think it is fair to say that your mother has weathered more hard times than many people have. That means it really isn't so odd that her spirits has grown old and bitterness has settled into her bone marrow."

"She's lost her heart, and all that is inside of her is jadedness now." Zahir bit his lip, fully aware that what he was about to ask violated about four social taboos, and then wanted to know, "You aren't going to take her advice about hitting Amaya and Taymur are you?"

He didn't know what he would do if Hassan said that he was planning to follow Jaseena's advice. All Zahir knew was that he would do everything in his power to protect his niece and nephew from being beaten as he had. He would find a way to shield the next generation from some of the agony that he had endured.

"I'm not." Hassan, who had been rocking the twins steadily in his arms, waggled his ears, twisted his nose, scrunched up his eyes, and stuck out his tongue in rapid succession. Apparently, this was for the babies' benefit, for their cries, which had been growing softer and more infrequent, ceased completely, as the infants gazed curiously up at their father. Repeating the sequence of comical facial contortions as the twins cooed in amusement, Hassan added, "Hitting babies, as she suggests, for crying seems like one of the least effective ways to get them to stop crying, though I admit that I've never tried the approach. I know that your father, like many Bazhir fathers, was never one to spare the rod with any of his children, but I don't think I'll be following in that noble tradition."

"You won't?" repeated Zahir, astonished but elated to stumble upon another traditional Bazhir man who shared his enlightened perspective on beating children.

"My father, much like yours, was a man deeply rooted in tradition's soil," Hassan said, his eyes gleaming at Zahir briefly before scrunching up for the twins' entertainment. "When my mother, whom by all accounts I resemble a great deal, died of childbed fever a couple of weeks after my birth, I think he couldn't bear the idea of beating the last gift she gave him. He was a stern but gentle father, and I respected him tremendously. I obeyed him not because I feared him, but because I loved him. I should like to follow his example. My father showed me that it is possible to raise a child properly without beatings, and, if I can bring my children up without thrashing them, I will do so. After all, I don't make a habit of hitting those I love, so I don't see why my children should be an exception to that principle."

"I think you have the right idea." Zahir hesitated, and then said, "My relationship with my father was hurt a great deal because he beat me. I'll always love him, but I can't pretend that his beating me didn't complicate things."

"No pain and no separation—not even death can end love. Love is born in life, and so death cannot end it." After establishing as much, Hassan was silent for a moment before going on, "Speaking of the pains of love, are you planning on introducing your family to your beloved Cait?"

"I was." The heat that suddenly burned in Zahir's cheeks told him he had flushed to the tips of his jet black hair. "Now, with what my mother said, I'm not so sure that's wise."

"Your mother might be determined to hate any northerner she encounters, but Laila and I aren't that prejudiced," Hassan informed him dryly.

"I know," he replied, his throat clogging as he thought that the love that his older sister and her husband shared for one another was so strong that it naturally radiated outward to embrace those other Bazhir would have scoffed at even the prospect of meeting. Laila and Hassan, like Cait, saw beyond skin color to where the heart was, and he didn't have to worry about the three of them hating each other. It was the rest of the Bazhir he had to fear would loathe Cait just because she was a northern woman who wanted to marry the future Voice. "It's just that what she said about the extremists targeting you, Laila, and the children for reprisals if I bring Cait here is true, and I don't want to endanger you."

"It is proper for a young Bazhir male to bring to his tent the girl he hopes to wed, and it is customary for his family to make her welcome," Hassan reminded him, his tone as crisp as dried cumin. "I will not let fear keep me from doing what I believe to be the right thing, and I will not allow the radicals to become the standard for my morality. Until I see them visiting the sick instead of just maiming people, protecting women rather than just persecuting them, and caring for the orphans and widows that their brutality creates, I will not permit their clearly skewed ethics to dictate my behavior."

"It's good to have a man with Bazhir morals to look up to." To his shame, Zahir felt tears prickling in his eyes, and he blinked to wipe them away before they could fall. Since his father had died, there hadn't been many men who shared his conservative values that he could really relate to or emulate, and, once his father died, Zahir had begun questioning the man's legacy. It was only recently that he had been able to reconcile his love and admiration of his father with his understanding that the man's actions had occasionally been gravely flawed. Now, it was a relief to find a breathing man he could love almost like a father.

"You have the Voice to look up to," Hassan observed. "He's a much better role model for you, I'm sure."

"I'm not." Grimly, Zahir shook his head. "You haven't seen how cruel he can be to those beneath him, a group, which, might I remind you, includes everyone in this realm."

"Does he beat you?" Hassan frowned, his eyes piercing into Zahir. "If he does, you must tell me."

"He's never beaten me." Zahir's tone was flat and bleak, but he couldn't prevent himself from continuing, because he wanted to explain to somebody how horrible it was to undergo what could only be described as a spiritual mind rape, "What he did was worse. He made me trust him. He convinced me that he would never hurt me—that he would never abuse me like my father did. Well, I guess that much wasn't a lie. He never abused me like my father did; he abused me worse than my father did. It was so stupid. I wasn't going to abide by the ridiculous curfew he devised just so that I couldn't visit Cait in the evenings when we were both free for a few hours, and I told him so. We argued, and then I had my mind broken into by the Voice. My entire head was screaming that I must obey the Voice. My mouth was begging to move to agree with his wishes. My knees yearned to collapse, so that I could kneel before him and crave his pardon for my insolence. My body and brain longed to obey the Voice, but my spirit didn't. I bit my tongue just to stop myself from surrendering, and all I could see was stars. When I finally did open my mouth to ask him to stop hurting me, I vomited all over the carpet. Nothing can be more painful than having not only your body but your spirit broken like that by somebody who is supposed to be the father of your people. To have someone who is supposed to be so holy violate your human dignity like that shakes any faith you might have in anybody."

"I can't believe that the Voice would dare to commit such a crime against you." Fires blazed in Hassan's eyes now, and it was clearly only the fact that the twins were now sleeping in his arms that prevented him from shouting in fury. "The bond that the Voice shares with every Bazhir is sacred. It's to be used for comfort, gentle guidance, and mild correction if necessary, but it's never to be drawn on to humiliate or force any Bazhir into submission. Maybe the radicals are right. Perhaps no northerner can truly respect our ways. Apparently, all they can do is attempt to oppress us with whatever they do understand about our culture. That the king would have the gumption to use his position as Voice to batter the mind of a Bazhir into submission speaks volumes about the contempt in which he and his northerners hold us."

"King Jonathan wants to assimilate us into his kingdom." Zahir pressed his lips together, realizing that he had never reflected on the full implications of assimilation and how what he was asking of Cait was dangerously close to what his knightmaster was demanding of him." That's why he wants Bazhir in the Own and in the Riders. That's why he wishes for me, a future knight tied to the Crown, to be the Voice after him. What he doesn't understand is that assimilation is never really possible. Bazhir will always think and feel differently than northerners. As a result, Bazhir will never feel completely at ease around northerners, and northerners, no matter how unbigoted they try to act, will never entirely let down their guard around Bazhir. What the king also fails to understand that assimilation is always a form of extermination—a means of wiping out all the differences between somebody else and you. It's less bloody than genocide but scarcely less reprehensible."


	58. Chapter 58

Lost Voice

Yellow, orange, and crimson tongues licked at the black night air from the three fires burning brightly in the center of the village that night at the celebration to welcome the royal progress to the desert. Although the fires blazed so vividly, they could not light the darkness more than a few feet in any direction. The dark hated the brightness cast by the flames and was so quick to swallow all of it.

The light of the fires wasn't the only thing devoured by the ravenous night. All the heat the cackling flames produced seemed to be consumed by the cold winds sweeping across the sand. Almost everything was black and cold. Soon there wouldn't even be an almost. Everything would just be darkness and chill. Light and warmth were being eaten up faster than any fire, no matter how energetic, could ever create them.

All around Zahir, people pretended they couldn't see that. They huddled beneath the blankets the women had laid out around the fires, and they clustered together, laughing loudly into the dark, as if that noise would somehow be enough to prevent the night from devouring them, too.

However, the Bazhir and the northerners did not cluster together. Even packed around three campfires, they held themselves aloft from one another. The night might have swallowed all color, but still they separated themselves based on it. Perhaps having that tendency was all that it truly meant to be Tortallan, Zahir thought grimly.

To his right, a knot of Bazhir men, women, and children sat on a blanket before the tribe's shaman, who was reciting ghazals in the ancient language of the desert. The shaman's voice was as gently wicked as any northern dance. In it, sound met sound, bowed, and retired. Then another sound entered only to be upstaged by yet another, and the two sounds would circle each other then stop. Sometimes the shaman's words moved in lofty spirals. Other times, they took strident leaps. Always, the edge, curl, and thrust of every poem's emotion was clear in the shaman's tone if not in the lines on his face and the flowing gestures of his hands.

Listening to the shaman's mellifluous voice, Zahir wished that the shaman was reciting in Common, although he knew that the poetry of most of the ghazals would be lost in translation.

His eyes falling upon the northerners dancing and drinking around the fire to his left to keep the chill of the night at bay, he found that he pitied them. All they could hear in the beautiful enunciations of his language was a series of grating noises sickeningly similar to a cat coughing up a hairball as large as the Copper Isles, or so Joren had claimed, except that he had called the Bazhir language ugly, instead of beautiful.

"Disgusting, isn't it?" a hard voice asked, and, spinning around, Zahir found himself facing a bearded man with a pointed nose and eyes darker than the night itself.

"Sorry?" Zahir frowned, not so much because he was confused, but because he could already tell that there was something distasteful and menacing about this man.

"The way the northerners cavort about like white devils." The man jerked his head, wrapped tightly in a burnoose, at the sashaying lords and ladies. "They have no shame about flouting their inequities. Their women prance about half-naked for the entire world to see. Their men drink in public and have no qualms about dancing with someone outside their family. They touch and look upon each other with the sole purpose of inciting lust in one another. They do not gather around campfires to listen to the poetry of their ancestors. I doubt that they even understand what art is."

"They doubt that we know what art is, too," Zahir replied bluntly. "We live outside their culture, so we can't judge it accurately, just as they live outside ours, and so can't judge it correctly. They accuse us of being savages, and we call them immoral, but none of us truly understand who we are insulting."

"I don't think so." The man's voice piled another layer of intractability and loathing on top of the ice and scorn already permeating it. "The less the Bazhir associate with northerners, the better off we will be. Bazhir embody virtue, while the northerners and all their glittering promises are nothing more than temptations—tricks sent from the Black God to ensnare the unworthy and unwary in traps of depravity."

"You're oversimplifying things," countered Zahir, his lips thinning. "You want to blame northerners if Bazhir women aren't modest enough, Bazhir men run away to cities, and Bazhir children disrespect their elders, but it's not that clear-cut. I feel just as uncomfortable watching northerners drink and dance wantonly as you do, but there are good things and people in the north, just as there are here."

"How do you know so much about the den of evil that is the north?" the man spat at him, his voice deepening and darkening. Its harmonics played on the primitive parts of Zahir's brain, commanding instant attention, demanding respect, requiring obedience, and inspiring dread.

"I spent years living there as a page and squire," Zahir responded as coolly as he could, reminding himself that someone who had the nerve to contradict the king and the Voice of the Tribes shouldn't be afraid to stand up to anyone.

"You are Zahir ibn Alhaz." The man's eyes sliced into Zahir in a manner that made the words more of a damning statement than a question. "It's you that King Jonathan would appoint as the next Voice."

"I am." Zahir lifted his chin. "Who might you be?"

"Oh, I can't believe that you don't know my name when it is on everyone's lips lately." The man's eyes gleamed like small, lethal fires burning away at a soul. "Well, a man is to be known by his works, so perhaps you are more familiar with mine than you are with me. At any rate, I am Haashim ibn Ghaazi. Enforcer of justice."

"Justice?" Zahir ground out through a clenching jaw. "Is that what you call torturing people? Is that what you believe sentencing people to death without a trial is? Is that what you call forcing your definition of right and wrong on everybody, instead of letting traditional Bazhir law govern the desert? That's funny. What you think of as justice has a stunning likeness to what I would see as injustice."

"You've been in the north long enough to develop a soft stance toward immorality," pronounced Haashim crisply. "Zahir ibn Alhaz, there is only one code of ethics that everybody must conform to or else be deemed as unrighteous. Adultery, fornication, and a child's unflinching defiance of his father's will are all wrong. Wearing inappropriate clothing and tempting members of the opposite sex to fall into depravity are always sinful. That means that anything that can keep people from giving into their sinful urges is good."

"Punishments that exceed the crimes themselves create more evil than good," Zahir snapped.

"None of the people who are punished are innocent." Haashim waved a hand dismissively. "They deserve whatever punishment they receive."

"You aren't innocent, either." The blood freezing in his veins, Zahir folded his arms across his chest in a desperate attempt to warm his cold heart. "What right do you have to pass judgment on people when you are every bit as guilty as they are, anyway?"

"That's a question that you'll have to ask the gods." Haashim smirked. "You see, they gave me all the authority that I need."

"You're mad." Wondering how a person could possibly be convinced that he had been chosen to terrorize a race of people, Zahir shook his head. "Just because some stupid voice in your head tells you to kill people, that doesn't mean that you should do it."

"Don't be so hasty in your judgment of me." Haashim shot Zahir a sidelong glance. "The Bazhir are the gods' chosen people, aren't they? The gods set us apart to receive their greatest revelation to mankind and to live according to the principles of that revelation, didn't they?"

"Yes to both questions." Zahir nodded, meeting Haashim's eyes steadily. "We are a holy people chosen by the gods to change the world, and to destroy inequity even as we are forever tempted to succumb to it. We stand for victory and justice, yet can never hide our own failures and cruelties from the sight of the gods."

"Exactly." Haashim clapped Zahir on the shoulder, a condescending grin spreading across his cheeks like rancid butter. "The gods demand nothing short of absolute submission to their commands from us, but, all too often, we decide to set ourselves against their will. When we do, the gods must punish us just as fathers must beat rebellious children. The gods allowed the northern king to rule over us because we had fallen into sin, so if we hope to be free of the northern yoke we must cleanse ourselves of every depravity. Purification is always painful, and this time the gods just selected me to be the one to cleanse the Bazhir."

"More like you've picked yourself for that role." Zahir's mouth twisted bitterly. "The king is the voice of the gods among the Bazhir, or have you forgotten that?"

"I forget nothing," Haashim informed him, his tone making it plain his words were a warning and a threat. "I will remember you and this conversation, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"As I will remember you, Haashim ibn Ghaazi," riposted Zahir, glaring into the man's eyes without so much as a shiver of fear, because he had gone beyond fear into righteous anger.

As Haashim, pivoting sharply on his heel, strode away to share his joy and tolerance with other fortunate individuals, Zahir grunted, "Filthy scumbag. He is so filled with shit that we wouldn't have to wait for him to die in order to use him as compost."

Zahir hadn't imagined that anyone else would be able to hear him over the dancing and the storytelling but a female voice he recognized remarked dryly, "You're being a bit harsh about my man friend, you know, Zahir."

"Nasira?" So surprised to hear her distinct tone that he failed to process her words or their meaning, Zahir spun around to face her as she came to stand beside him. "I didn't see you there."

"Yes, well, that's the womanly ideal, isn't it?" Beneath her black veil, Nasira's eyes were inscrutable, but there was more than a trace of an air amiable mockery about her. "Ladies shouldn't be seen or heard, right? They should just fade into the background."

"Is that what Haashim says?" Zahir demanded, his body stiffening as he finally understood what her first comment to him meant.

"Haashim says a lot of things." Coyly, Nasira lowered her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. "Being a foolish girl, I can't remember what many of those things were or are."

"I see you're still smart enough to feign ignorance." Zahir snorted. "Anyway, I do stand by what I said before about Haashim. He doesn't have a shred of decency, and he has about as much compassion as a glacier. I don't see how you could be happy with him."

"Unlike you, not everyone gets to be with whoever makes them happy," Nasira explained as patiently as if she were repeating a simple fact to a classroom of halfwits. "Just because you can afford to kick up a sandstorm by trying to marry whoever you wish, that doesn't mean that everybody else can do the same."

"You could kick up a sandstorm about being with Haashim if you wanted to," retorted Zahir, stung.

"Oh, then maybe his men would let me choose between being stoned or being cut to pieces for dishonoring him by refusing his advances," Nasira hissed, her glance flicking about to ensure that nobody was close enough to overhear. "Believe me, people have been killed for doing much less than that. Trust me, it requires all my cunning and feminine wiles to resist him without seeming to do so. It takes far more wit than you will ever possess to appear to give a man everything while withholding the most important things. Oh, yes, I walk a fine line between being thought too rigid or too loose—"

"But if you don't love Haashim, don't be with him," Zahir burst out earnestly. "You are a widow with your own money. You can support yourself. You don't need a man, especially not one like Haashim."

"You really have been away from the desert too long." Nasira shook her head, her veil rippling in the night breeze. "Maybe you've forgotten that love has little to do with most matches. People here are lucky if they find love in a marriage, but it's certainly not expected."

"That could change," insisted Zahir.

"Not now." Zahir could hear the smile, as brittle as marzipan, behind Nasira's words. "Nothing will be changing for the better in the desert for quite some time. Those who wish to literally keep their heads would do well to wrap their minds around that fact now. Haashim rules here, and, if he wants, he can take all I have away from me, so, yes, if I have to, I will give myself to him, since I won't be giving him anything that he wouldn't be able to steal from me before killing me. By giving myself to him, I maintain at least some vestige of dignity and control."

"I'd be miserable like that." His head aching, Zahir massaged it with his palms. "I can't imagine how awful it would be to have to consent to my own rape."

"It's not rape if you consent." Nasira's tone was flatter than the desert ground.

"And it's not consent if you don't have a choice," snarled Zahir, quashing the urge to shout out the fury pounding through his bloodstream.

"Women never have a choice." Nasira's gaze locked on his, and he saw, for the first time that evening, the purple splotches under her eyes. Fighting to swallow the bile that scorched up his throat to his mouth, he wondered if she was being beaten by Haashim as she had once been hit by Nadir.

Nothing could drag her out of the cycle of domestic violence, it appeared. Her own father had shoved her into an abusive relationship. Stupidly, Zahir had believed he had saved her when he had, after Nadir's death, provided her with the means to support herself, but nobody really could rescue anyone.

His angry despair mingled with hers as she continued, the shadows beneath her eyes nothing compared to the shadows within her gaze, "The only person I would have picked to marry me decided not to take my hand. The only person I loved—whom I thought might even have loved me back once—didn't love me, after all. If I can't be with the one I love, it doesn't matter who I'm with, because, wherever I am, I can still envy the wind—" Suddenly, her voice lowered to a murmur as seductive as the force of nature she described. "I can envy the wind that whispers in his ears and brushes through his hair, just as I can be jealous of the sun that brightens his day, warms his body, and makes him sweat in a way that I never will."

Sweat dotting his forehead and his breath quickening as he realized that Nasira might very well be confessing that she lusted after him just as he had once hungered for his flesh to meet hers in every conceivable manner, Zahir announced tersely, "I have to go. See you around, Nasira."

Or perhaps he wouldn't, he added to himself as he hurried off, not caring in which direction he traveled as long as it took him away from Nasira, and not concerned about whom he bumped into as long as it wasn't Nasira he collided with.

Guilt flooded his veins with every beat of his heavy heart, which must have been replaced by a stone during his conversation with Nasira. Obviously, life would have been fifty times better for her if he had wed her after Nadir had died, but he hadn't wanted to do that, and he still didn't wish to be bound to her. He could save her, even now, but he didn't desire to do so. It revolted him, but he would rather be with Cait than rescue Nasira from habitual rape by Haashim.

All too soon, he stepped outside the circle of light cast by the flickering flames. The darkness inside of him felt soothed by the blackness around him, and so he collapsed onto the sand street, letting his head sag against his chest. In his world, everything was wrong. Every day, he had made a hundred bad decisions, most of which hadn't seemed that evil or dumb at the time, and which had all conspired to lead him to this terrible moment.

Closing his eyes, Zahir found his brain deluged with images of everybody who had suffered or died because of him. First there was his father, who had died passing along the wisdom and power a chief needed. Then there was Uncle Kamal, whose head Zahir had chopped off himself in a fit of wrath brought on by the man's treason against Alhaz. After that, Nadir, who had dared to plot against his cousin, had been killed, and it was no consolation that Zahir's sword hadn't been the one that delivered the mortal blow. Trevor, who was always working tirelessly for peace and understanding, had been slain protecting Zahir from an attack Zahir had been too slow to block.

"What should I have done with Nasira, anyway?" Zahir asked hoarsely, blaming the gods who were responsible for every tragedy. "What was I supposed to do in any of those circumstances, huh? You say that you never forget your people, but you do, don't you? You let children cry by the sides of their dead fathers. You allow sons to continue the wars of their fathers. You watch as men beat their wives, and you don't stop fathers from pushing their daughters into abusive marriages. Every day, you forget your people, and that's why I tried to help Nasira. I didn't hurt her like her own father did—I never laid a hand on her even when I lusted after her. I did what you were too busy in the Divine Realms to bother to do. I looked upon an abused girl with compassion, but what good did that do her?"

"I hate to interrupt your devotions, because I've been taught that it's rude to do so, but I felt that you deserved to know that you aren't as alone as you supposed." Khalila's tone was as soft as a baby's skin, but the sound of it was enough to make the blood freeze in his veins. He hadn't thought that anyone would be able to see or hear him this far away from the celebrations. "I'm sorry if I startled you."

"You could have announced yourself sooner," mumbled Zahir, grateful that, in the darkness, she couldn't see his flushed cheeks. Blackness was adept at hiding people's shame. Doubtlessly, that was why Haashim and his men seemed to enjoy terrorizing beings in it.

"I could have," Khalila teased him, "but that would have taken all the fun out of witnessing you at your most vulnerable."

"You're as cruel as anyone in Haashim's gang." Zahir scowled.

"I am." There was a rustle of skirt skimming through sand, and then a hand, warmer than his mother's had ever been, enclosed his own. "You know that you can ask me anything you would have asked the gods, though, and probably you'll get more immediate answers."

"I have nothing to ask you." As if struggling to dislodge an irksome fly from his hair, Zahir shook his head. Then, even though he had planned to confide in Khalila shortly after the desert was covered in ice, he found his tongue spilling out words against his will. "I guess I thought everything was over for our tribe once Nadir had been killed. We got our mostly happy ending, or I thought we did, anyway, but it's not the end. It's never the end. Even after I heard about Haashim dominating the desert, I was still kind of hoping that there might be a happily ever after in there somewhere. Not for me. I'm ready to die if I have to. It's everybody else I'm worried about. It's like everything we went through to free the tribe from Nadir was for nothing. We're still fighting. We'll always be fighting. That means I didn't actually save anybody."

"The past is gone," Khalila told him, stating what he regarded as something that should have been instantly apparent to any intelligent toddler. "The future is imaginary. Even eternity will always be _now_. Don't worry about what you've done or failed to do in the past. Don't worry about what you'll do later. Just do something now."

"That would be fine advice, girl, if I had any idea what to do," Zahir growled, battling the urge to rip out his own hair in frustration.

"Now that might be something you have to ask the gods," Khalila commented lightly.

"If they actually deign to speak with me, they'll be too busy explaining why they let a dirtbag like Haashim ibn Ghaazi speak on their behalf." Zahir gritted his teeth. "Oh, yes, they'll have their work cut out for them trying—and most likely failing—to get me to understand how they just watch as good people suffer and die at the hands of villains. Maybe they can explain why they never jump into the fray to save the day, but always leave the task to mere mortals."

"Perhaps they can, and perhaps they can't." Zahir could sense Khalila shrugging beside him. "At any rate, it might be something of a comfort for you to hear that Haashim really does seem to love Nasira."

"That's no consolation to me." Zahir pressed his lips together. "Khalila, love can only be as pure as the person doing the loving. Fools love foolishly. Drunks love drunkenly. Sloths love slovenly. Tyrants love tyrannically. The possessive love possessively. The wicked love wickedly."

"You don't think love is powerful enough to reshape us in its own image?" asked Khalila, the fingers she had wrapped around his squeezing gently. "You don't suppose that love is strong enough to redeem even the evilest of men?"

"You are too much like Aisha if you believe that love is all that is needed to protect Nasira from Haashim," Zahir pronounced tightly. "I assure you that I have been loved by people less vicious than Haashim and still been hurt by them in the name of love. I've received more wounds and scars in love than I have in hatred, and the ones I got by love always ache more than the ones I received by hatred. Believe me, it won't help Nasira that Haashim loves her. Haashim's great love for her will just cause him to injure her more in its name."

"I begin to understand, I think." Through the night air, Zahir could somehow feel her gaze locking on him, ferreting out all his secret fears and his most desperate desires. "What of you, Zahir? How do you love?"

"Fearlessly." For what felt like the first time in centuries, Zahir grinned, although something about his smile reminded him of a wolf baring its teeth before a hunt. "I'd do anything to protect and be with those I love, and, no matter how many times my heart has been broken because I love, I continue to do so. That may sound stupid, but it's the most courageous thing in the world. It's easy not to care, so you don't have to feel anything when someone you know is hurt or killed. Only the bravest people can carry on caring about others in the face of death and destruction."

Abruptly wondering why Khalila was interested in how he loved, he demanded gruffly, "What are you doing out here, anyway?"

"Knitting," responded Khalila, her manner suggesting that this shouldn't have even been a question in his mind.

"You don't have a candle," he pointed out.

"I don't need one." Impatience was laced into her tone now. "I'm the granddaughter of our shaman, remember? Ever since I was little, my mother taught me how to magically see the threads I would sew, weave, or knit. I don't need light to see my threads when I have my Gift."

"I forgot about that skill of yours." Zahir's lips twitched into a smile once more. "I'll bet that isn't your greatest thread magic trick of all, is it?"

"No, it isn't." Khalila's voice was now as dark as the uncharted depths of the Emerald Ocean where krakens and other sea monsters lurked. "I can use a knot of thread to weave invisible strings around people to make them trip or lose control of their bodies. I can make objects move just by tugging on strings in my weaving. Even those aren't my greatest talents with thread magic, though."

"Really?" Zahir eyed her as appraisingly as he could in a darkness that didn't allow him to see his own nose clearly. "What is your greatest talent, then?"

"You should pray, Zahir ibn Alhaz, that you will never have the chance to see it," answered Khalila, and he didn't have to see her face to know that she was all grimness. "The patterns that the gods are weaving all my carpets and tapestries into seem to suggest that our fates will be entwined and that you will see my most special skill even if you don't want to. Still, it never does any harm to ask the gods for a reprieve, does it?"

"It never does any good, either." Zahir snorted. "The gods snip threads on whatever heavenly tapestry they're creating, and they don't care that someone down here snuffs it. They tie stings together, unconcerned that the people represented by the threads might not want to be bound with one another. In short, they do whatever suits them, and it doesn't matter to them if we are injured by what they do with our lives, just as it doesn't impact us much if we kill a bug when we set up a tent pole."

"There you are, Zahir," Cait shouted merrily, her face illuminated by a torch that was blowing fitfully in the wind as she approached him. "I've been looking all over for you. I just got off duty."

As Khalila rose, murmuring something about wanting to listen to the shaman's poetry, Zahir said, "I hope you won't be too upset that I'm not the life of the party, Cait. I never have been wild about festivities. I'd rather have a conversation with a couple of close friends than attend a big, noisy party."

"Is the girl who just left one of the close friends you enjoy talking to?" As she posed this question, Cait planted the torch in the dirt behind him and then slid down to sit beside him.

"She's more of Aisha's friend than mine," replied Zahir, shrugging. "She's a nice enough girl, but my feelings for her will always be entirely elder-brotherly. To me, she'll always be Aisha's only slightly less annoying twin."

"Did she not like me?" Cait's forehead, streaked in orange by the torchlight, furrowed. "Is that why she left as soon as I appeared?"

"Why are girls always so sensitive?" Zahir rolled his eyes. "Is it some requirement of your gender to read too much into every word and action?"

"And is it some rule of your sex that you must be so nasty about everything?" retorted Cait. "Do all males have to be as strong as oxen and almost as intelligent?"

"Answering a question with more of them is the sign of an inferior mind." Haughtily, Zahir lifted his nose in the air.

"In that case, you must really be a shuffle short of a playing card, genius, since you were the one who started the trend." Her eyes gleaming in the orange glow cast by the torch, Cait smirked at him.

"Ah, but who is the more idiotic: the fool, or the moron who follows him?" With a triumphant snicker, Zahir slipped an arm around her shoulders. "Anyway, since I know that your brain is getting tired of trying to keep up with my brilliance, I'll tell you that Khalila probably left us because she wanted us to have a time of peace alone together, and that's just what we're going to have."

"Do we really have time for that?" Cait shot him a dubious glance. "Shouldn't we be trying to show at least some of the Bazhir that I have some good sides even though I am a northern warrior woman? That way, if I catch on fire, maybe a few of them would pour their water on me instead of drinking it."

"We shouldn't waste any more of our time together trying to persuade Bazhir or northerners to accept our love," Zahir whispered, resting his cheeks against hers, his flesh burning as it made contact with hers and his breath catching as his nostrils were flooded with her delicious scent. "Those who could tolerate our romance are already open-minded about it, and those who are repulsed by the possibility of our two races being united by marriage won't warm to the idea just because we never stop thrusting it upon them."

"What are you saying, Zahir?" A vein was pulsing wildly in Cait's neck now. He could feel it throbbing against his arm. "Do you want us to give up now?"

"I will not surrender my love because some bigots are scared of it. That was never one of my life goals, and it certainly isn't now." Zahir's fingers sought out the pounding vein, stroking the tender skin above it until the pulse relaxed. "I'll never give you up, Cait, and I can only hope that you won't let me go, either."

"I think I'm going to find true love in my life so rarely that I'd be an imbecile to throw it away when it stares me in the face." Cait chuckled, emitting a sound that contained far more bafflement than humor. "I don't see how we can be together without trying to make our match acceptable to the Bazhir, though."

"Our relationship does not hinge upon their pleasure or consent," Zahir reminded her tartly, deciding not to think about his deal with King Jonathan that specified that he would only be allowed to marry Cait if she managed to charm the Bazhir. "If we are happy together, then we have the approval of the only two people who should matter as far as our relationship is concerned."

"You have to lead the Bazhir." A dimple materialized in Cait's cheek that informed him she was biting the inside of her mouth. "That means that your wife will have to be someone of whom they can approve, which is the main reason why I'm willing to quit the Riders in order to become your wife and the mother of your children."

"You might be willing to do that for me, but I don't want you to have to do that for me." Zahir swallowed hard as he choked out the words that contradicted everything that he had been raised to believe defined the ideal family and the perfect balance between the sexes. Wondering dismally if the day when he could count everything he had once held dear all as a lost was so far away and grateful that his declaration had caught Cait off-guard long enough from him to take a deep breath to fortify himself, he continued, "I love you, Cait. I'll love you whether you are a housewife or a Rider. I don't want you giving up part of what makes you special for me or for the Bazhir. If you decide that being a housewife is really what you want to do with your life, then I'll support your decision, but if you still wish to be a Rider, I'll support that choice, too, and we'll find a way to make things work. I still think that women are designed to be mothers and wives, while men are meant to protect and provide for them, but I know that there are plenty of times when the world forces people out of their appointed gender roles. I also recognize that tradition doesn't always bring joy to a family. My father and mother followed all the rules about what men and women are supposed to do, but there was precious little love behind what they did for our family. I value tradition, and I think that customs offer an important blueprint about how families should be built, but I would pick love over tradition any day of the week."

"So would I." Cait kissed his forehead, her rosebud lips leaving no doubt in his mind that she would eventually remove all his thorns. "I am delighted that you are so concerned about honoring my wishes, Zahir-"

"I should have been more worried about it earlier," Zahir interrupted, hating his old self. "I shouldn't have just accepted your decision to give up your career to suit the Bazhir and me without really checking if it fulfilled your needs and desires, as well."

"How could you have?" Cait tickled his eyebrow with her soft lips. "I don't even know what I want to do with the rest of my life. All I know is that I won't be making the decision of what to do with my future without consulting you first."

"You can make the choice by yourself." Zahir took care to emphasize this, pondering whether this crucial information had escaped her notice previously.

"I know that." Cait elbowed him in the ribs. "I've always had that right. It's definitely not one I need you to bestow upon me. I just choose not to make major decisions without your input in the same way that I choose not to completely subordinate myself to you."

"Well, don't completely subordinate yourself to the Bazhir, either." Zahir tightened his grip on her shoulder to ensure that she understood just how serious he was. "Assimilation is a form of cultural annihilation as reprehensible as genocide, Cait, and it never works, anyway. Even if you become a perfect Bazhir wife and mother—able to raise your children, cook meals, and weave with the best women of the tribes—many Bazhir will scorn you just because you are of northern birth, much as many northerners despise me because I am of Bazhir ancestry, even though I'm not really any different than any other squire. It's pointless to waste your life trying to earn the approval of people who will always see your very existence as an affront to their morality and hate you for that."

"You aren't being very encouraging now, you know," Cait chided, tapping his nose.

"That's because you didn't let me get to the second part of my speech." Zahir wrinkled his nose at her. "I was going to say that just because assimilation doesn't work, that doesn't mean that our relationship is doomed to failure. I can be a Bazhir, and you can be a northerner. We can come together without having to surrender anything essential to us. We can be like a mosaic, our tiles uniting to make a beautiful piece of art, yet not losing the colors or shapes that make us unique in the process. That was the vision that the king once had for our entire country, you know, but he lost sight of it when he tried to appease both sides and ended up satisfying neither."

"Leaders are always losing sight of what really matters," Cait murmured, reclining her head on his shoulder. "To help us not fall victim to the same mistake, let's just be quiet and look at the stars for awhile like we did before we even knew that we were in love."


	59. Chapter 59

Author's Note: I warn everyone that this chapter contains some fairly gruesome/ somewhat explicit murder scenes and foul language from some less than admirable characters, so please decide for yourself whether you want to read this chapter. In fact, I did debate whether to raise the overall rating to M, because of these elements, but, on a whole, I've decided that what happens isn't really much worse than what you would see in a teen movie or video game or read about in some teen books. Chances are, if you are old enough to read a TP book, you are mature enough to handle this chapter, I think. Rest assured that this isn't gratitious violence, either. It's meant to make a point.

I have also brought back the Ysandir, since I personally never could believe that powerful evil immortals who survived for centuries and were only trapped in a city by a ring of fire created by the strongest Bazhir mages were just defeated by two teenagers who didn't really understand what they were doing. It kind of reminded me of those novels where the protaganists, through reading some lines of poetry, happen to find after like an hour of searching an ancient treasure that has been hidden for centuries, and I end up asking myself if anyone but the protaganists had ever looked for the treasure anyway. I hope you'll all be able to except the return of the Ysandir, because, otherwise, you may not enjoy the climax:D

In the Darkest Night

Zahir never wanted to move from Cait's side. He wished that he could spend the rest of his life with his heart beating in unison with hers, and his breath making his chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm with hers. He wanted his nostrils always to be flooded with her scent, and his skin to forever tingle with the knowledge that her flesh was mere inches away from his. He longed to be lost with her forever in the brilliant illusion the stars emitted—that the past really was over, the future would never come, and that, for everyone, eternity rested in every heartbeat.

Unfortunately, the heat and brightness of the fires seemed to gradually weary of fighting the cold, dark night. The flames, no matter how much fuel was added to them, continued to dim, until, eventually, someone took pity on the dying blazes and banked them. Now, their warmth and luminescence was snuffed out as though they had never been. Only ashes remained off what had fed them.

As soon as the fires were put out, the entire celebration lost the delusion that it could be merry in the dark. The northerners stopped drinking and dancing, while the Bazhir shaman trailed off in the middle of a poem.

For a moment, everyone was swallowed by the blackness. Then, like stars bursting out across a winter sky, scattered lanterns were lit throughout the crowd. By the faint yellow moons cast by these lanterns, Bazhir and northerners pushed through the hordes back to their tents.

"I should report back to my Rider group's tent," Cait shouted to Zahir over the cacophony of drunks stumbling, people cursing loudly when somebody jostled them too roughly, and a hundred beings calling out farewell to one another. "See you whenever we both get a free moment."

Zahir opened his mouth to scream that he loved her, but decided that the words were stupid at a time like this, and planted a kiss on her lips instead. She would know what the kiss meant without him having to tell her.

"I love you, too," she murmured, and he didn't so much hear her as he did feel her mouth move beneath his. "I ought to go before too many Bazhir see you kissing the enemy. We don't want everybody to see you as a traitor."

"Their vision would be very impaired if they saw you as the enemy," Zahir whispered, knowing that she would sense rather than hear his comment. "Hasshim ibn Ghaazi is their enemy, just as he is ours."

"Haashim ibn Ghaazi isn't our enemy." Cait shook her head.

"He isn't our long-lost friend, either, Cait." Zahir snorted.

"The world isn't divided between our friends and our enemies," pointed out Cait wryly, placing a placating palm on his chest. "Situations are fluid, and beings change. We can't just label people as for or against us."

Far from soothed, Zahir hissed, grateful that most of the masses had already shoved paths back to their respective tents and so could not overhear his discussion with Cait, "Haashim ibn Ghaazi cuts out the tongues of women who are outspoken and of sons who talk back to their fathers. He has his men flay disobedient wives and children until they are bloody messes. He kills anyone who dares to disagree with his twisted behavior. He terrorizes people into submission. If I wasn't against him, then I wouldn't be able to meet my own eyes in the wash basin water."

"Be against him." Gently, Cait brushed her lips across his cheek. "Just remember that the enemy is not him, but what he represents."

"Oh, and what does he represent?" demanded Zahir, his mouth thinning. "He likes to claim that he speaks for the gods. Do you reckon that's so?"

"No, but you'd probably like to believe that he does just so you can blame everything that has gone wrong in the desert on them," she responded, her tone crisp. "Haashim ibn Ghaazi does not serve the gods or even himself. He does the will of the dark. Zahir, it is the dark that turns a thirst for justice into a craving for vengeance. It is the dark that sets race against race, country against country, husband against wife, and parent against child. The dark is the enemy, not Haashim ibn Ghaazi. Don't forget that, because, if you do, you'll be as blind as the dark wants you to be."

"I'm certain that the dark wants you to be all depressing, too, instead of being a little ray of sunshine like you usually are," grumbled Zahir.

"Doubtlessly." With a giggle, Cait kissed him one last time and then drifted off toward her tent.

As she disappeared into the night, Zahir headed toward Hassan's tent. Since he didn't have a lantern, he had to rely on the moon, stars, and his own innate sense of direction to find his destination. After what felt like an eon of walking blindly through the blackness, he arrived outside his family's tent.

When he stepped inside, he heard his mother shout over the partition separating the women's sleeping area from the main part of the tent, "You took long enough to get back. I can only assume that you were having fun wasting time as usual."

For a moment, Zahir bit his tongue to prevent it from snarling something nasty at his mother. Then, when he had mastered his temper, he answered with all the politeness he could muster, "Yes, I did talk to some truly charming people at the festivities. Did you enjoy the party, as well, Umm?"

"Celebrations are for the young who still think that there is cause for rejoicing." Jaseema's gripe was perfectly audible through the curtain. "The poetry wouldn't have been awful, though, if that wretched shaman hadn't pronounced some words like an angry goat. A poem doesn't sound very artistic when half its words are mangled beyond repair. I suppose we can only be grateful that our shaman speaks our language properly."

"I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the poetry," Zahir called to his mother, but, as he slipped through the curtain into the men's side of the tent, he mumbled to Hassan, "I thought that the shaman declaimed beautifully."

"So did I." Hassan smiled, settling into his sleeping mat. "Now if I were you, I'd go to sleep as soon as possible. The sooner you go to sleep, the longer you'll be able to dream before you are awakened by one of the twins' awesome nighttime performances."

"If I were you," Zahir replied, as he changed into his nightclothes and slid onto his sleeping mat, "I would just embrace the fact that if your children are anything like me, they'll be in their twenties before you'll sleep through the night."

"At least I'll know what side of the family they inherited their obstinacy from," muttered Hassan, his blanket rustling as he shifted into a more comfortable sleeping position.

Zahir smirked as drowsiness descended upon him. His smirk eased into a faint grin as sleep gradually overtook him.

_For awhile, his dream consisted of him and Cait dancing beneath the light of a full moon that was beaming down upon them. With all the hope in their souls, they whirled each other around the sand, which was far softer against their bare feet than it had ever been in Zahir's life. They were spirits dancing gracefully, far more coordinated than their heavy bodies should have allowed them to be. For the first time, he even dared to think that maybe their bodies didn't have souls, but rather their souls had bodies. _

_He could never keep track of time in dreams, and so he had no idea when Khalila joined them. He didn't even know if she had been dancing beside them all along and he had only just noticed her presence. All he knew was that he could see her now, twirling and shaking in the wind to the beat of a drum inside her that only she could hear. As she swayed, her clothes—no longer a black but a pearlescent white—swayed around her. The stars shone in every strand of her hair, her eyes were constellations, and even her skin glistened like stardust. When she shimmered with the light of the night, he saw, for the first time, that she was beautiful. _

_He heard a rich, velvety laugh from behind them, and spun around to see Nasira, her veil tossed aside, laughing with more joy and music flooding her laughter than he had heard pervade it since she had been paired with Nadir. The sound of her laughter—which looped endlessly upon itself, without a start or finish line—was the soothing darkness that enveloped them with all the gentle firmness of a loving mother's hug. _

_Then, the garish orange glow of a shooting star inflamed the heavens. By its harsh, uneven light, a scowling Haashim ibn Ghaazi appeared. _

_Reflexively, Zahir glared at this evil man, who had been responsible for the deaths and the torturing of so many Bazhir. As he glared at the villain, his eyes widened. Then, before he knew what was happening, the sand was crumbling beneath his feet, and he was being sucked without warning into the black hole of Haashim ibn Ghaazi's eyes. _

_Everything was the crushing black that existed behind his eyelids when he squeezed them up in a desperate attempt to escape from the pain of his father's rod tearing into his back. However hard he tried to imagine the pain away, it never disappeared, just like this crippling darkness would never fade. He only had time to think that he should have been more careful about gazing into Haashim's evil eyes, because when you glared at the dark, it glared back. Then, his mind wasn't his anymore, but Haashim's, and he was living in Haashim's memory. _

_He, Haashim ibn Ghaazi, was prostrated, his face pressed against the scalding desert sand as the blazing sun burned through his shirt into his back. He hoped that the hot sand would burn away his flesh and that the sun would evaporate him._

_He couldn't live as long as the memory of what he had seen cut through his veins with every heartbeat. He longed to gauge out his eyes so he could stop seeing that scene of terrible betrayal, but it was his brain, not his eyes, that was replaying the worst moment of his life. He was tempted to bash his brain out on the hot stone before him, but he couldn't do that because the gods had forbidden him to kill himself. They also prohibited him from slicing out the heart that was continuing to shred itself as it tore apart more and more of its beliefs and certainties. _

_Of course, he knew that he wasn't the one who deserved to die. It was his faithless whore of a wife, Shahla bint Amin, and his traitorous best friend, Aswad ibn Barir, who should die. He still couldn't believe that he had stepped into his tent to find them down on all fours doing it for all the world like a pair of goats in the heat, their tongues lapping away at one another's naked flesh. _

_His wife had tricked him into believing that she was a virtuous woman, a lovely cactus without thorns, but she was nothing more than a pretty she-devil. All the innocent gazes she had focused upon him hadn't been so innocent, after all. Every kiss from her lips had tasted as sweet as honey when he had been convinced that he was the only one she had ever kissed. Now, the memory of every kiss burned like vomit in his mouth when he understood that her kisses were cheap favors that she didn't reserve just for him. _

_And his supposed best friend was even more of a traitor. They had known and trusted each other since they were boys. They had shared all their triumphs and tragedies, and Haashim could never have envisioned Aswad being his downfall. They had whispered a thousand secrets into one another's ears, but Aswad had never told him the most important one. They had comforted each other through all the growing pains and tribulations of childhood and adolescence, but now Aswad wouldn't be there to mend Haashim's broken heart because it had been Aswad who had shattered it. _

_The double loss of his best friend and the woman he had loved devotedly, and, apparently, so undeservedly, was too much for him to bear. It made him sick to think that the two people he had cared about most in the world didn't worry about his feelings at all. They had been able to screw each other like jackrabbits and then look him in the eye without any guilt. They hadn't loved him. At least, he hoped they hadn't. The notion that they could have loved him and still betrayed him would drive him insane if he wasn't a lunatic already. _

_He knew exactly what he should do. He should have his slut of a wife and his bastard of a best friend tried for adultery. He should have them stoned. He should have all the skin that had been kissed so heatedly in lust be torn apart in a hailstorm of rocks. He should let all the blood that had surged with adulterous urges pound with fear. He should let all their guilt be poured out on the desert sand, so that they could finally feel the shame and agony he felt when he had caught them entwined like adders in his own tent. He should be able to make them suffer as he had at their hands—hands which had touched every inch of each other's feverish bodies. He should get to watch their execution, and he should even get to cast the first stone._

"_You should." A voice from the darkest depths of his soul purred. "Yet you don't want to do any of those things—not really. You don't want them to suffer for what they have done to you, even though it is only fair that they should hurt for the crime they committed against you. You don't want justice to be done, but if you don't punish them for their inequities, you are just as depraved as them." _

"_I love them." Haashim shook his head frantically, trying to clear it of the awful voice. He didn't speak aloud because he knew that the horrible voice inside him could hear his thoughts. _

"_Oh, but are they worthy of your love?" the voice inside his head demanded. "How can they claim to love you when they were screwing each other senseless behind your back? If they don't love you, why should you love them? Why shouldn't you hate them as they hate you?" _

"_Who are you?" he asked, refusing to accept that these loathsome desires could brew anywhere inside him. _

"_We are children of the gods. We are indestructible, though many have tried to destroy us." Two voices echoed proudly inside the cavern of his skull now. "At the present, however, you can be sure that we speak nothing but your most secret desires." _

"_These aren't my desires." Haashim pressed his lips together to keep from shouting the words out loud. _

"_Liar," the two voices inside his head murmured, their tones as mild as their words were severe. "Stop lying to yourself and to us when all of us know the truth. The truth is that you hunger for justice, which means that you crave to see the blood of those who broke your heart spilled out. Don't suppress your feelings any longer. Let them have full reign. If you are angry, destroy that which infuriates you. When you are hurt, strike back instead of turning the other cheek. If someone jabs out your eyes, chop off his head. If somebody stabs you in the back, cut him through the heart." _

"_That's evil." His own voice was little more than a whisper now. _

"_Let me tell you about evil." The voices were seductive purrs now. "It's typical moralist propaganda to label it such. Let's give it another name: truth. The truth is that you do care about your wife fucking your best friend, and you should. The truth is that you want vengeance for it, and you would be less than human if you didn't. The truth is that principles that seem right to gods that live forever make no sense for those who live, suffer, and die in this world. A mortal's life is so short, so precious. To turn your back on it, and to try to teach yourself not to feel is a waste. If the universe loves the good—if the morality of the weak really governs the world and if life is fair—why are you in so much pain now? Well, the answer is simply that there is no good and evil. There is only life…or not. When people stop denying what they have always known in their hearts to be true, they come to some degree into their own power, but that is not the end of the journey. It is the beginning. That despair, that furious instant when your eyes open enough for you to behold the world as it really is, is nothing more than a necessary first step." _

"_Why are you telling me all this?" It wasn't just Haashim's mouth that had gone as dry as sand. It was his soul. _

"_We want to give our wisdom to you." The voices were sweeter than any victory could be. "We can give you the secrets you need to order your world so that you will never feel pain like this again. We will place all our power and knowledge at your disposal as long as you prove yourself worthy of our service." _

"_How would I do that?" He had asked the question before he had remembered that he didn't want to pose it in the first place._

"_You would bring your bastard of a best friend and your whore of a wife to our altar in Black City." Haashim knew he should have recoiled at the realization that he was speaking to the devils of Bazhir mythology, but he couldn't bring himself to care, somehow. In the cruel desert in which he lived, it made sense that the only beings who would hear his cries would be demons. It also made perfect sense to him that the devils had survived even though everyone liked to believe that the Voice had defeated them years ago. Why shouldn't evil endure until the end of the universe when it was woven into its very fabric, after all? "You would chain the slattern you are married to onto our altar. You would slice off all her clothing so that she would lay as naked as a baby upon our stone altar. You would cut out her tongue for kissing a man that isn't you. You would jab a dagger up her vagina into her womb for letting a man beside you penetrate her. Only then would you pierce her unfaithful heart with your knife."_

"_I can't do that." Haashim shook his head, but even he knew the protest was feeble. The truth was that not only could he do such things, he wanted to do them. The thought of undressing his wife and making her suffer as he had before he killed her aroused him. Stoning wasn't justice, and that was why he had recoiled from the idea of doing it to his wife, but what the Ysandir suggested was exactly what Shahla deserved. _

"_Why not?" The voices were as pointed as the dagger they wanted Haashim to use to slay his wife. "She has used her tongue against you, and, therefore, she has shown herself unworthy of it. Her vagina has been used to commit a crime against you, and so it is only fair that it should be desecrated as it has violated you. Her treacherous heart has broken yours, and so it is only justice that it should be torn open itself. Crimes of flesh must be paid for in flesh, and crimes of blood must be atoned for in blood, or else the very order of the universe is unbalanced, and justice is never done. That is why you will also punish the scumbag who committed adultery with your wife. You will strip him and tie him beside her before you begin to cut into her flesh. Then, after he has watched her die, you will cut out his tongue because he used it to kiss your wife. You will then chop off the penis that dared to penetrate your wife. Only after that will you plunge the knife into his heart, as well." _

"_He's my best friend." Haashim bit down on his tongue so hard it bled, filling his mouth with the taste of rotten pomegranates. _

"_Best friends, like all people, are replaceable." The voices pealed like bell calls to worship in his ears. "With our help, you will find a hundred friends who will not betray you." _

"_I don't want them." He could feel his whole body trembling with revulsion and the desire to destroy the false friend destroy who had attempted to ruin him. "I want Aswad back." _

"_You can't have Aswad back because you never had him in the first place." The voices were blunt but somehow not unsympathetic to his plight. "Besides, there's no reason for you to want a friend who would betray you again without a qualm." _

_That was right. Why would he want to continue to love somebody whose actions were so hateful? Why shouldn't he cut out the heart of the man who had abused him so? It was only right, after all, that he do so, and he could already feel in the blood roaring through his veins that it would be easier to do than he could possibly have imagined. _

_He was the chief of the tribe, so Shahla and Aswad were duty bound to obey him when he told them to ride out with him, two sets of manacles concealed in his saddlebags. Of course, they might have rode out with him anyway. At the very least, they might have felt guilty enough about their betrayal to wish to appease him when he found out about it. However, he was not to be placated by anything but their gruesome deaths now. Only when the blood had flowed like a scarlet river from their treacherous hearts would he consider their debt to him paid. Suffering alone would purge them of their inequities. _

_He didn't remember what he said to them on their journey to the place where they would atone for their sins against him. Only vaguely did he remember how he had felt when he reached Black City, how it had felt to stare out at the remains of buildings that had been abandoned for centuries but were still a locus of a power beyond the comprehension of any mortal—except, perhaps, for him, the being whom the Ysandir had sought out to bequeath their knowledge to. _

_He let himself forget the fear that had surged through him as his eyes drank in deserted city. Instead, he allowed himself to remember the voice inside him that was deeper than fear, which bade him to enter the city and the temple dedicated to the Ysandir. He let himself recall how it was that voice inside him that had given him the might he needed to dominate Aswad and Shahla—to drag them through the gates and into the temple against their wills. _

_Wild elation coursed through his veins as he shoved the struggling traitors toward the altar. The taste of honey rippled through his mouth when he punched them hard enough to bring them smashing down upon the unyielding stone. His face twisted into a smile when he saw the first streams of blood pouring from their eyelids and nostrils onto the altar. Triumph raged within him as he chained their arms and legs to the altar where they would be executed. _

_His ears rejoiced to hear the puffy-lipped whore, her eyes too swollen to give him one of her beguilingly innocent looks, stammer up at him, "What are you going to do with us?"_

"_With us?" he repeated scornfully, shooting her an icy glance as he slapped her across the face. When he discovered that the sound of his calloused palm smacking her soft cheek echoed pleasantly throughout the room, he backhanded her again just to hear the delicious sound of his flesh hitting into hers. "Are you still under the delusion, woman, that the two of you are a unit?" _

"_No," Shahla responded quickly. Desperately, she tried to bring her hands up to shield her face, but he jerked them away from her face before they could offer even the faintest protection. "I'm your wife. What the gods have put together no man can pull asunder." _

"_But he has done his best." He nodded his head at Aswad, who was nursing a profusely-bleeding broken nose. "Anyhow, to answer your question, I shall do something with you, and something with him, but there is no 'us' between you and him as of this moment. Is that understood?" _

"_Yes," Shahla answered, as eager to please as a puppy that had just been kicked in the chest by its master's boot. _

_He took Aswad's face in one hand and tilted it toward him with a shaman's tenderness. "You understand that, don't you?" _

_Too distressed for speech, Aswad merely stared at him. After a minute, as satisfied as he would ever be in that matter, Haashim nodded once again._

_With a flourish, he unsheathed his dagger and displayed it to them with the air of a child revealing a personal treasure. "This small piece of metal," he informed them, "has many uses. It can cut silk—" Here, he slashed the knife upward, cutting the tatters of Shahla's veil, which had been torn in the struggle to the altar, away from her face entirely—"like this." _

"_Haashim," Shahla squeaked, bringing her hands up to hide her face. _

"_Don't act all modest now, bitch," he snarled, slapping her hands away from her humiliated face. "You let him look on you without your veil in the past. Why should it be any different now?" _

"_Of course," he went on savagely before she could stutter out a reply, "you showed Aswad far more than just your face." Haashim's dagger lashed out again, this time severing off her dress and undergarments before she could do anything more than fight futilely against the shackles locking her to the altar. "You let him see and touch your whole naked body." _

"_In all fairness, though, she wasn't the only one who revealed more of herself than she should have," he purred, cutting off Aswad's breeches, shirt, and undergarments in several swift slices. "You also showed off more of your flesh than you should have, didn't you, Aswad?" _

_Turning back to Shahla, who was desperately attempting to cover her breasts and the dark triangle between her thighs with her curtain of black hair, he asked, "But why are you ashamed off the beautiful body you had no compunction flaunting to a man who wasn't your husband?" _

_His tone was oddly conversational as he yanked a wad of her hair toward him and chopped it off. As he continued to cut off fistfuls of her hair, he murmured, "Let's have an examination of conscience, shall we, my dear? I know that you were never devout, but the fundamental commandments of the Bazhir are not to be broken lightly even by you. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Have you heard that one?" _

"_Thou shalt not have any false gods before me." Shahla's spine was rigid, and there was a distant expression in her eyes, as if the only way she could deal with the indignities inflicted upon her body was to act as though her spirit was a million leagues away. "That really is the only sin I can commit against you, isn't it?"_

"_Tut, my darling, you verge on sacrilege." Haashim smirked as he cut off the final handful of hair affixed to her scalp. "Certainly, an examination of your sins gives us much cud to chew, even you must admit that. By taking a lover out of wedlock, you have compromised the sanctity of the womb that is supposed to bear my heir. Not only that, but you have stolen the affection of my closest friend." _

"_I ask again, what are you going to do with me?" Shahla's chin trembled, but she valiantly attempted to keep her expression free of all fear. _

"_Nothing less than what justice dictates." His smirk growing, Haashim rested the cold tip of his blade against one of her nipples. He waited until he saw her entire body tense. Then, he sliced it off. As her screams of shock and anguish bounced off the high ceiling, he chopped off the other nipple. Then, for a moment, he stared at her chest, admiring the red roses that bloomed where her nipples had once been. As the red began flowing down her stomach, he said, "You let Aswad suck on those, and so I think it only fair that I remove the source of temptation." _

_Haashim's knife glinted as it flew up to her howling mouth. As it hovered outside her mouth, he whispered in her ear, "Your tongue thrashed around like a snake inside Aswad's every orifice, didn't it? It seems only logical, then, to cut out another part of your body that led you into the deadly sin of adultery." _

_Her wails intensified as she realized what he was planning, and her tongue danced frantically around in her mouth, trying to evade the dagger that swooped inside her mouth to cut it out. A second later, her screams stopped as his dagger found her tongue. Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she was silent as he yanked out her tongue and dumped it on the ground before the altar. Even Aswad, who seemed to be paralyzed with horror, couldn't cry out for her. _

_Haashim's dagger trailed down Shahla's body, dripping drops of blood along her chest and stomach. "You let Aswad penetrate you here, didn't you?" he asked softly. Then, before the tongueless woman could find a way to answer, he stabbed her through her vagina, pushing the knife up into her womb. _

"_No!"Aswad shouted, thrashing about in a wild endeavor to liberate himself from the chains binding him to the altar. _

_Her mouth agape in a silent scream of agony, Shahla writhed about on the hard altar, her manacles clinking harshly against the stone, as blood poured from her womb into a thick, crimson puddle between her thighs. _

"_You broke my heart," Haashim concluded, roughly withdrawing the dagger and poising it directly over her heart. "Therefore, I think it only just that I should break yours." _

_Shahla's skin glistened with sweat, her breathing was ragged, and her eyes were clenched shut, as if she couldn't bear to watch what she knew would come next. Looking down on her and feeling none of the love for her that had once throbbed through his veins, Haashim plunged the dagger through her flesh, through her ribcage, and into her heart. _

_He grinned as he tugged the dagger out of her and watched the blood pour out of the hole in her chest. Seeing her gasp for air one last time, and then seeing her chest stop heaving forever was the very definition of power. He alone had possessed the authority to decide when she stopped breathing, and when the warm, yielding flesh of her body became cold and stiff. He alone had even possessed the power to determine the place and means of her death. Justice was in his hands to enforce, and enforce it he would, even if he had to spill the blood of every Bazhir in the desert. _

"_Stop!" Aswad's scream seemed to echo through the air from miles away. "This is madness!" _

"_No," Haashim countered, smearing Shahla's blood off his knife onto Aswad's cheek. "What you did with my wife was madness. It's always madness to covet thy neighbor's wife, especially when thy neighbor in question happens to be the chief of thy tribe and thy best friend." _

"_If you're going to kill me, get on with it," Aswad spat, as Haashim's dagger wormed its way into his mouth. "Don't play with me as you did with the Shahla." _

"_Oh, but why should I not play with you when you played me for the fool with Shahla?" demanded Haashim, his knife swooping down to cut off Aswad's tongue. Now he wouldn't have to deal with any more protests or pleas for mercy from the best friend who had betrayed him. _

_Coldly, he ran the smooth surface of the dagger along Aswad's chest and stomach, admiring the lines of scarlet the blade left in its wake. His knife hovering over Aswad's genitals, he hissed, "You cuckolded me with these, so I think it only fair they be removed." _

_Several bloody flashes of metal later, Haashim's blade came to rest directly above Aswad's heart. "You broke my heart," he growled, gazing into Aswad's eyes, which, even now, were filled with tears that the other man was too proud to let fall, and wondering how two boys who once would have given up their lives to save one another had ended up slaying each other, instead. "Now, I will break yours. Best friends share everything, Aswad. Even broken hearts." _

_Then, in the swift second that it took to translate thought into action, Haashim's dagger pierced Aswad's skin, pushed through his ribcage, and finally penetrated his pulsing heart. As the warmth trickled out of his friend's battered body, Haashim kept his knife firmly planted in the man's heart, so that he could feel the life leave Aswad, just as, a moment before, he had felt Aswad's final gasp depart his lungs._

_Humans were such fragile things, he understood as he withdrew his dagger from Aswad's lifeless body, and watched, with marvelous indifference, a pool of blood flow out of the hole in the man's chest. People could so easily be unmanned by a cut to the privates, silenced by a slice in the mouth, or killed entirely by a thrust to the heart. Even that only covered the physical means of destroying a person. It was easy enough to destroy a person's soul with a terrible betrayal, but, thanks to the Ysandir, his soul hadn't been ruined. His anger had been channeled into action, his desire for vengeance had been transformed into perfect justice, and his sense of impotence had been transfigured into a source of power. In his grief in the desert, the Ysandir had delivered him from himself. _

_They had promised to share their wisdom with him if he came here and followed their commands, and they were keeping their words. He could feel that now. He could feel their icy understanding seeping into his veins now, telling him everything that he would need to know to change his life and the lives of everyone in the desert. _

_From them, he knew that only power was real, and that the only real power was the power to destroy. Existence, he saw now, was fleeting, and only destruction was eternal. Every child was born waiting for death. Civilizations fell, and their very ashes were swallowed up by time. The stars themselves burned out, and most of the light in the nighttime sky came from stars that had already perished. _

_Destruction was the will of the universe. Some scholars tried to quantify it and constrain it within mathematical laws. Some shamans expressed it with a simple poetic declarative: Things fall apart. Some jokers even tried to dismiss it with a wisecrack: Anything that can go wrong will. Yet, it was not a joke or poetry; it was not mathematics, nor was it subject to any law. _

_Destruction was easy and permanent. When a being was killed, everything he or she would have ever done or possessed, seen or felt, was murdered. That murder made a permanent change in the fabric of the universe—it emptied the universe of an entire life, and left behind only a void. That void was the foundation of truth, and that truth was the reality that there was nothing but the dark. The dark would provide him with all the servants that he needed, because everybody had the urge to destroy, and, through the Ysandir, he would provide them many opportunities to give full reign to that compulsion. _

"Aurgh." The shout was torn from Zahir's throat as he finally managed to wrench himself away from Haashim's revolting thoughts of destruction. It was a relief to be free of them, or it would have been. Somehow, he didn't feel as though he had escaped. Instead, he felt as if he had been infected with the truth that life was a joke, and not even a funny one—just a pointless, stupid waste of a jest. A spark of suffering that would eventually be extinguished by eternal nothingness.

In his dream, it had felt like he was hanging in the darkness at the end of the world, and, now that he was awake, he had just turned that darkness inside out, so that it lived inside him now. He had clawed his way back to the dream world of life, but all he had ever known in his life was darkness and death. He had seen so many lives wasted, and it didn't matter whose fault particular deaths were. Not at all. Death wasn't anyone's fault. Everything that lived struggled and suffered for a brief interval, scrambling in pain and terror to stave off the inevitable tumble back down into the dark.

All that suffering, all that struggling, was all for nothing. What did it matter if you succeeded beyond your wildest hopes or if your dreams were ground to dust? Win or lose, your triumphs and joys, regret and fears and disappointments, all ended as a fading echo trapped in a mound of putrefying meat.

Blame it on the gods, he concluded bitterly. Why should life be at all, or, if it had to be, why did it have to be more than a thin film of scum drifting on an infinite dead sea? Surely, it would be better to have never lived at all than to exist for only a moment of struggle and suffering, deluded by the illusions of light and life…

Heroes and villains, kings and peasants, soldiers and seamstresses, all went to the same final dark, so why struggle? He didn't have an answer. Oh, he remembered answers of duty, tradition, honor, and love from his father, his mother, Lord Wyldon, the king, and his sisters, but none of them had understood. Not really. Or maybe they had. After all, what was their talk of duty, honor, and love really? In the final analysis, wasn't it nothing more than a method of controlling him?

But he didn't want to think about such things, and he didn't know why the dark chose to reveal all its secrets to him. Even if there was only darkness, he wanted to believe in the light. Although he might really be all alone in the universe, he wanted to believe that he wasn't by himself. Maybe, like Haashim, he was so tempted by the dark, because there was more dark in him than there was in most people. Perhaps the dark recognized itself in him and sought to draw the darkness within him ever closer to itself.

He must have emitted another distressed noise because there was a sound of a shifting blanket beside him, and the next second, Hassan's voice, heavy with sleep, asked, "What's wrong, Zahir?"

"Nothing," Zahir answered shortly, thinking that he wasn't about to confess to a grown man that he was still tormented by nightmares.

"You expect me to believe that nothing has you waking up screaming in the night." Hassan snorted. "Next you'll want me to believe that it's midnight when the sun is in the middle of the sky."

"You wouldn't understand." Even though he knew that Hassan couldn't see him in the dark, Zahir shook his head. "You're too pure to understand the awful things I think and do. You belong to the light, and I belong to the darkness."

"Nonsense. You belong to the light as much as I do, and I belong to the darkness as much as you do." Hassan clasped Zahir's shoulder. "I've made many mistakes in my life, and I've done some things that are so terrible that, to this day, I still wish I could reverse time long enough to undo them."

"Like what?" Zahir pressed, his eyes narrowing dubiously. "Did you forget to help some shriveled old lady carry her water when you saw her stumbling back from the oasis? Is that your big crime?"

"To the old lady, I have no doubt that would seem like a big crime. After all, as I learned the hard way, injuries that may sound minor to us may be debilitating wounds to those we hurt." Suddenly, Hassan sounded as though something hurt, or as if everything hurt. "Zahir, when I was a boy, I was—at the risk of sounding as arrogant as I was then—very popular. All the other little children loved to play with me as much as I loved playing with them. I never had any trouble finding someone to ride with me, to play tag with me, or to explore the desert with me. I was one of the children who was the center of attention, and I pretended not to notice that meant that my popularity was defined by the lack of attention that was paid to others. I was always happy to join in the teasing of the handful of children that everybody in the tribe agreed were weird, because it was fun to taunt them. It didn't even feel wrong when everyone else was doing it. I only realized how wrong it was when one of those freaks chose to swallow some poisonous herbs to end the pain that we put him through every day of his life. Everybody said it was suicide, but I felt like we had murdered him, and that words had been our weapon."

"It was his choice to kill himself," Zahir argued, not sure why he was debating the point when life didn't matter anyway. "You aren't responsible for his decision."

"I am my brother's keeper," responded Hassan firmly. "I was happy to be the friend of any child except for those outcasts who really needed someone to treat them with kindness. I wanted to join everyone else in kicking those poor pariahs. It would have been so easy for me to reach out to that boy and invite him to ride or play with me, but I never did. I showed no charity to a helpless young boy, and sometimes I fear that the Black God will not grant me any mercy when I appear before his throne. After all, when a row of people pray, if one person is unclean, the prayers of that entire row are in vain, and the person who is unclean will be held accountable by the gods for all those failed prayers. How much worse will be the fate of a soul who caused another soul to destroy itself? Will not that soul be made to pay for both those damaged souls? I can only hope that everything I've done since then to atone for the destruction caused by my casual cruelty will be enough to even the scales. "

"You're one of the most virtuous people I've ever met." Zahir's jaw set. Even though he didn't believe that anything but the dark came after life, he wasn't going to let one of the most moral people he knew live in fear of eternal damnation for one sin committed in youth."The gods claim to be merciful and just. It wouldn't be just or merciful for them to condemn you to an eternity of suffering for one crime you didn't even understand that you were committing."

"The gods' ways are as far over our heads as the sky is." Gently, Hassan clapped him on the shoulder. "All we can know is that whatever judgment we receive from them will be the one that absolute justice and mercy demand we get."

"We probably won't be judged at all." The words burst out of Zahir's mouth before he could halt them. "In the end, we'll probably be nothing but worm food. Our lives will be nothing more than a patch of light between two periods of infinite darkness. Nothing we do will be remembered, and everything and everyone we love will be destroyed, because destruction is the will of the universe, which means that our lives and everything we do in them is meaningless."

"Creation is the will of the universe," Hassan corrected mildly. "The universe and everything in it was created because the gods wanted to make something beautiful. Humans share that drive to create. That's why we build cities, write poetry, and make artwork out of even the most common household items. People may have the desire to kill each other, but they have even stronger urges to love one another, to protect each other, and to produce beautiful babies. I won't deny that people inflict terrible pain on one another, but they also sacrifice themselves to heal each other. I won't even say that we aren't in the dark, lad, since we are in it."

Hassan paused long enough to ruffle Zahir's hair before going on quietly, "Here we are in the dark, and it is not empty. It is not meaningless. Not with all of us here. It's beautiful, because we are the lights in the world. The gods' light doesn't just shine down us—it shines through us. All of us are stars, and every star, every life, is a thing of beauty. Love and the drive to create beauty are our natural states. It is only when love is perverted into hatred that we long to destroy instead of to build."

"Thanks for talking to me like this." Zahir swallowed the rock clogging his throat. "You've done what my own father probably wouldn't have done."

"He would have done it in his own way," Hassan commented calmly. "Like you, your father wasn't afraid of the darkness outside of him or the light inside him."

"What about the darkness inside of him?" demanded Zahir dryly. "It's the darkness inside me that terrifies me the most."

"As it should." Hassan squeezed his shoulder. "The dark outside of us seeks to control us through the dark within us."

"And I seem to have more dark in me than most people." Zahir sighed. "I'm a killer and a bully. No wonder the dark torments me with nightmares."

"That's what the dark wants you to think," Hassan educated him crisply. "The dark doesn't want you to think that it puts so much effort into tempting you because you have more light inside you than many people. The dark doesn't want you to suspect that, while it preys on everyone, it concentrates most of its energy on the greatest individuals, because they make the best trophies. It doesn't want you to realize that it devotes itself to subverting the noblest people from the inside until they become hollow shells that can be filled with anger and hatred, which can serve the dark's purposes."

That was what had happened to Haashim, Zahir decided grimly. The nastiest lesson of Haashim's undoing seemed to be that even the best and brightest people could be turned into vicious monsters. After all, when the Ysandir slipped into Haashim's brain, they had changed his thirst for justice into a craving for revenge, replaced his compassion with ruthlessness, and hardened his determination into adamantine cruelty.

The dark would not steal Zahir ibn Alhaz the way it had Haashim ibn Ghaazi. He would shine as brightly as he could even if the darkness around him was eternal, because the light inside him was his only weapon against the dark inside and outside of himself. He was himself. He was not the dark, or its minion.


	60. Chapter 60

Dirt and Thorns

After his nightmare—was that the proper word for a horror far more than just a dream—about Haashim, Zahir couldn't bring himself to close his eyes for fear that the Ysandir would begin to convert him into one of their agents of evil if he shut his eyes and let his mind relax.

He knew that the Ysandir weren't completely to blame for the bloody crimes Haashim had perpetuated against Aswad and Shahla. There must have been darkness inside of Haashim to start with in order for the Ysandir's darkness to consume him. There must have also been some sick desires to maim, to kill, and to destroy boiling inside of Haashim before the Ysandir persuaded him to slay his best friend and wife. After all, the Ysandir may have tempted Haashim, but he hadn't been tempted to do anything he hadn't wanted to do, and he had chosen to give into the temptation. The Ysandir were evil, but there had been a wickedness inside of Haashim long before the Ysandir slipped into his brain. The Ysandir didn't create darkness; they merely exploited it.

Worse still, Zahir couldn't pretend that he didn't share the wickedness that he lurked inside Haashim. Zahir, too, had felt the overwhelming drive to kill someone not in justice but in vengeance he could call justice. He, too, had allowed the blood of his enemies to pour out. He was no less depraved than Haashim, and the Ysandir would be able to conquer him as easily as they had overcome Haashim.

In the end, Zahir didn't care how virtuous Hassan believed him to be. Hassan was a good man, and so, naturally, he saw the goodness in others, instead of the evil, which meant he couldn't be expected to understand how many dark desires crouched inside Zahir's black heart.

With only these grim thoughts for company, Zahir spent the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling of the tent, wishing with every pound of his heart that he could defeat the dark inside him forever, and knowing he was much too weak to do so.

Even though the blackness inside him didn't lighten, faint streams of yellow eventually began filtering through the thick fabric of the tent. Hoping that a walk through the crisp morning air would free him from some of his stifling thoughts and that the brightness of the sun rising across the sand would banish some of the blackness inside him, he slid into a shirt and breeches. Then, as quietly as he could, he crept out of the tent.

Fully intending to return to his family's tent before breakfast, he strode down the dusty path toward the outskirts of the village. Aware that soon women would be heading to the oasis to fetch water for cooking, he turned away from the water supply. Solitude was what he wanted right now, he thought as he crossed the sand.

His only goal had been to escape the crowd that would inevitably surround the oasis in the near future, and so he was astonished when he found himself gazing across miles and miles of sand finally interrupted by black buildings that looked no bigger than fingers from where he stood, but that were nothing short of intimidating even as this tremendous distance…

Even from here, he could feel just how wrong they we, and sense that they should never have been constructed. Even from here, he could feel the memory of all the atrocities committed there by the Ysandir. Even from here, he could hear the screaming souls of the beings, like Haashim, who had sought enlightenment there only to be trapped by their own desires. Even from here, the stones shrieked out the names of the men, women, and children who had been sacrificed to evil upon them.

As if in sympathy with his sinking soul, his wobbly knees brought him collapsing onto the sand. Resting his forehead against the red ground, Zahir felt reassured by the cold, sweet scent of the night that lingered in every grain of sand. It was so easy to forget that all dirt was clean, and it was only humans who were filthy.

Pressing his knees, palms, and forehead deeper into the sand, he allowed the red dust to settle into his skin, so that he could lose track of where he ended and where it began, because, right now, all he wanted was to be rid of himself…

Sand crunched behind him, and lifting his head, he saw the king approaching. "I'm sorry to interrupt your morning prayers," his knightmaster murmured, kneeling down next to him. "Please continue as you were."

"I'm not praying," Zahir muttered, thinking that he was not going to lie even by omission, because it was so simple to be false in major things if you were dishonest in minor ones. "Maybe I would be praying for myself and for Haashim ibn Ghaazi if I didn't feel like I've forgotten how to pray."

"You can't forget how to pray." King Jonathan patted his shoulder. "Prayer is lifting your soul up to the gods . As long as you have a soul, everything you do and say can be seen as a kind of prayer."

"If you say so, sire." Zahir twisted out of his knightmaster's grasp, and spun his face around to glare at the man. "I'm so grateful that Your Majesty is always around to offer absolutely useless advice, but , unfortunately, Your Majesty never seems to get around to telling me anything important, such as that Haashim ibn Ghaazi is terrorizing the entire desert."

"Don't be impudent, or I'll urge Master Oakbridge to arrange for you to wait on all the fussiest nobles at every banquet for the next several months, Squire," the king warned, his voice stern, but his blue eyes glinting.

"The fussiest nobles would never permit a Bazhir to touch their food for fear it would be laced with poison." Zahir snorted. "Anyway, sire, I'm smart enough to realize that threats are nothing more than your attempt to distract me from the fact that you have no excuse for not telling me about what Haashim ibn Ghaazi was doing before we arrived in the desert."

"I didn't know what he was doing before we came here," his knightmaster responded tersely. "I certainly can't tell you anything that I don't know myself, can I?"

"Your Majesty really should have chosen Garvey or Vinson as your squire if you wanted one who would be stupid enough to swallow tales like that without choking." Zahir rolled his eyes. "Anyway, as a Bazhir, I'm not likely to forget that you're the Voice, and so you can read the hearts and minds of every member of the tribes during the nightly communion."

"I don't read the hearts and minds of those who don't participate in the nightly communion, Zahir." Shaking his head, King Jonathan sighed. "I'm the Voice, not a god. I can't delve into the minds of people without those beings' consent."

"I didn't gargle from the fountain of knowledge when everybody else drank, sire," Zahir hissed, his hands clenching into fists. "I know that you can invade the mind of any Bazhir that you want to, so if you don't go fiddling around in Haashim ibn Ghaazi's head it's because you don't wish to do so, not because you can't."

"Your people are prideful," the king informed him softly. "None of those who were scared of Haashim ibn Ghaazi would have confided in me during the nightly communion, and his supporters wouldn't have participated in the rite at all, since it entailed communicating with a northerner, and since it might warn me of what Haashim was doing in the desert."

"You didn't find it suspicious that so many Bazhir suddenly weren't participating in the ritual, Your Majesty?" Zahir's jaw tautened, as his eyebrows contracted menacingly. "I can't believe that."

"Of course I was suspicious," King Jonathan replied coldly. "I suspected that many Bazhir were irritated by how much northern influence pervaded the desert. That's part of the reason I made a habit of continually warning you that the Bazhir would not tolerate you marrying a northern woman."

"So, you were suspicious, sire, but you never bothered to figure out exactly what they were doing by peeking into their minds?" Zahir demanded, breathing heavily, as his heart throbbed in his eardrums.

"Should I have become a terrorist in order to fight terrorism?" snapped the king, eyes blazing like the deadly, azure cores of flames. "Should I have become a tyrant in the name of defeating another tyrant? Should I have broken the law to show how much I value justice? Should I have tortured them to prove the importance of mercy?"

"Save your beautiful speeches for those who haven't seen how ugly you can be, Your Majesty," Zahir snarled, folding his arms across his heaving chest as he glowered at his knightmaster. "Torture is a perfect word for what you did to me when you entered my mind and forced me to submit to your will. Justice wasn't a high priority for you when you didn't want me staying out after curfew to see Cait. Mercy didn't matter when you were dealing with your own squire, so why should it make a difference when you are dealing with Haashim and his supporters? Do you only torture those who don't terrorize entire tribes of people?"

"Zahir." King Jonathan reached out his hands, as if to place them on his squire's shoulders, but let them drop limply to his sides at the last second, as though he sensed that the young man wouldn't allow him that gesture of affection. "I wish that you would forgive me for abusing our bond like that, but I do understand if you can't, because I can't forgive myself for what I did to you. Nothing could ever justify what I did to you. Both of us know that. However, just because I abused my position as Voice once, that doesn't make it right for me to do so again. The fact that I violated the sanctity of your mind doesn't mean that it is any less wrong for me to do the same to Haashim or any of his men."

"Your conscience cripples you at the most inopportune moments, sire," spat Zahir, a fire burning where his heart had once resided. Oh, how he wished that he had never met the king. How could such a charismatic man not have been able to snatch up Zahir's heart and then crush it just like Zahir's father had? "What a pity for the rest of us."

"Squire, even after what I did to you, the bond between us is much stronger than the one that exists between Haashim and me," the king pointed out, his tone hushed. "That means that it would be harder for me to slip into his mind like I did yours. In fact, it might not even be possible for me to infiltrate his head like I invaded yours."

"When you want me to try to trust you as much as I did before you mind-raped me, you probably shouldn't tell me things like that, Your Majesty." Zahir's lips pressed into a bitter line. "I'm not a masochist. I don't want to maximize the amount of pain you can inflict on me."

"Zahir," his knightmaster began, but Zahir cut him off.

"Don't worry, sire." Zahir emitted a laugh that was filled with as much loathing for himself as it was for his knightmaster. "I'm already defeated. You've won the war. You're my Mundhir."

"Your what?" Obviously bewildered, King Jonathan frowned, his forehead knitting.

"Even northerners learn about the Battle of Mundhir, although their history classes make it sound like a glorious triumph instead of an ignominious defeat like our stories portray it to be, but the privilege of writing history is one of the spoils of war given to the victors." Smirking, Zahir went on, his manner as crisp as the sand beneath his feet, "It's another case where the winner stands tall, while the loser feels small, and the winner takes it all, while the loser is left to take the fall. Anyway, I'm sure you haven't really forgotten that it was at the Battle of Mundhir Oasis that your grandfather killed Juzzar ibn Hannad, the warrior who had united the Bazhir in the war against the northerners. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that once Juzzar ibn Hannad was slain, the Bazhir tribes started fighting against each other as much as they did the northerners, and that allowed the northerners to capture Persopolis. Mundhir. That's why we're even standing here together like this."

"I know about the Battle of Mundhir," the king told him, eyebrows arching. "I just don't understand how you can think I defeated you like my grandfather did Juzzar ibn Hannad."

"You don't, Your Majesty?" Zahir asked, his eyes widening. "Well, let me explain, then. Before we even met, you could read my mind and heart just because you were the Voice. Then, when I entered page training, I effectively swore fealty to the Crown until I died, which means that I am honor-bound to dedicate my life to you and your heirs. Before I even became your squire, I knew it was my fate to serve you forevermore. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't escape from my duty to you with my honor intact, but the worst thing about you is that I don't even really want to escape. You're charming enough that I end up liking you when I should hate you, and charismatic enough that few careers seem more glorious than being your tool for life."

"Squire." King Jonathan's voice was the soft, melodious one he used when he was trying to convince blue-blooded nobles that some proposed changes in policy would not bring the world as they knew it crashing down around their ears. "I think you're exaggerating."

"Well, when you're the king of the dung heap, you can always look down on those who worship you, sire." Zahir's mouth twisted, and, before, he could stop himself, he had burst out, "I bet that's why you went to Black City in the first place. You wanted to rid the desert of the Nameless Ones, so that all the Bazhir would have to get on their knees and praise you as if you were some god incarnate. You hoped to defeat our monster for us, because then we would have to admit that you were greater than us, wouldn't we?"

"I went to Black City in the hope of destroying the Ysandir," answered his knightmaster grimly. "I hoped to free the desert from a terrible evil. I won't deny that I nourished a dream of earning the Bazhirs' respect by defeating the Nameless Ones, but I wanted them to respect me as a future ruler, not to worship me. There's a difference, Zahir."

"If you say so," Zahir responded icily, taking an abrupt interest in the smooth curves of his fingernails in order to cultivate the impression that his next words were offhand ones of no relevance to anyone. "Of course, maybe it doesn't matter. Perhaps you didn't destroy the Nameless Ones like you thought you did."

He had anticipated that this pronouncement would alarm King Jonathan, and he had taken a savage delight in imagining the shocked horror that would flare in the man's oasis blue eyes. Instead, a coolness emanated from the king's eyes and tone as he replied, "When Alanna and I escaped from Black City, I believed we had vanquished the Ysandir. I thought that two novice mages had been able to achieve what a group of experienced ones had not. It was only when I became the Voice and saw visions of the history of the universe that I understood that the fundamental nature of the Ysandir cannot be destroyed by mortals. Mortals can ruin the physical bodies of the Ysandir, but their spirits will survive, and, unlike mortal souls, the spirits of the Ysandir do not depart the Mortal Realms once their physical bodies have been destroyed. The spirits of the Ysandir will remain in the desert forever. While they may suffer setbacks, they will always be eager to regain the ground that they have lost. Only the gods have the power to destroy the Ysandir, and perhaps, on the last day, they will."

"I don't see why they would do that then if they won't do it now." Derisively, Zahir snorted. "Either the gods do have the power to get rid of the Ysandir and they won't use it because watching us suffer is spectacular entertainment, or else they can't beat the Nameless Ones because the dark really can put out the light."

"And the tiniest light truly can illuminate even the blackest night," countered King Jonathan briskly. "Perhaps the gods want us to experience that for ourselves through our own victories against the dark."

"What victories?" Zahir gritted his teeth, thinking that if his knightmaster had witnessed the unfolding nightmare of Haashim's temptation, the man would not have been so smug. "You accomplished nothing at Black City, Your Majesty. Nothing. Do you understand me or should I switch to another language?"

"Change to any one that isn't the Defeatist that you're speaking currently," King Jonathan ordered firmly, a spark of irritation kindling in his eyes. "Also, you'll want to rephrase that part of the sentence about Alanna and I achieving nothing after everything we went through in Black City. Think in the general direction of antonyms."

"I don't deny that you suffered in Black City, since that place was built to cause people pain." Defiantly, Zahir lifted his chin. "However, I'm not going to pretend that anything you and Alanna did there had any meaning. You may have poured out your sweat, your blood, and your magic to defeat the Ysandir, but the Nameless Ones still remain. Your sacrifice has accomplished nothing, so it was worthless. Like everybody else, you suffered pointlessly, and that nothingness is the only meaning there is. All we are sand in the wind, and everything we do crumbles, even if we pretend not to see that."

"Sacrificing yourself for others is all the meaning that there is, Squire." His face stern, the king reached out and clasped Zahir's shoulders tightly. Though Zahir wanted to pull away, he couldn't manage to yank himself away from the steady, commanding gaze that had wrapped like an anchor around him when he was drowning in the turbulent dark water of despair. The king, he thought, had always been like an anchor to him, but an anchor could only grip him to reality and prevent him from drifting too far off-course in a strong gust of wind. An anchor couldn't provide him with a sense of meaning or a reason to survive. Only those he had truly loved—Laila, Aisha, Cait, and Trevor—had been able to make him want to live for them. He would die for his knightmaster, but he would live for those he truly loved even if his life was pointless. "Alanna and I weakened the Ysandir, and we showed people that the Nameless Ones could be fought against. We lessened, if only for a time, the power their evil could have on the desert. In the future, it will only require the bravery of others to keep them at bay once again. To have meaning, an action doesn't need to be permanent. It just needs to be good or to inspire good."

"You say that because you haven't seen the nightmare I had last night," grumbled Zahir, shaking his head.

"Did you receive a nightmare about Black City, then?" demanded King Jonathan, his eyes narrowing as his hands tightened around Zahir's shoulders.

Wishing that his knightmaster would loosen the bone-crushing grip, Zahir, heat climbing his cheeks, muttered, "Not dreams like the Bazhir used to get about Black City, sire. I'm not going insane, if that's what you're worried about, and I certainly don't want to run off to Black City like recipients of the visions used to struggle to do. In fact, after what I saw in my nightmare, I'd rather go to the worst potion of the afterlife than there."

"Those Bazhir experienced a compulsion to go to Black City, Zahir. It wasn't so much that they wanted to go there as they felt they had to go," the king corrected him, knuckles whitening from clenching Zahir's shoulders. His eyes lancing into Zahir's, he concluded in scarcely more than a whisper, "If you go to Black City, it will be because you feel compelled to do so, and if you fight the Ysandir, it will not be out of any desire for glory but out of a sense of duty. Perhaps that alone will be enough to protect you from them."

"Nothing will be able to shield me from the wrath of the Nameless Ones if I dare to challenge them in their own domain." With a snort and an eye roll, Zahir jerked himself free of his knightmaster's clutches. "Anyway, Your Majesty, I don't have any intention of travelling to Black City. I don't even want to stay in the desert any more now that Haashim ibn Ghaazi controls it."

"If you leave the desert now, what happens to the Bazhir?" asked the king in the determinedly patient tone in which he began many of his lectures on Zahir's selfishness or impulsiveness.

"They continue to be led by an immoral lunatic, and nothing gets better," snapped Zahir, thinking that his knightmaster still didn't understand the desert. "Of course I could fight Haashim and still nothing would improve, unless you count my family and me becoming corpses an improvement, which I don't. The desert is a hard, cruel pace where everything dies and people like Haashim always win."

"That's why you're just going to abandon your people." Rubbing his beard pensively, King Jonathan surveyed Zahir. "I see."

"The people brought Haashim upon themselves." Zahir grunted, refusing to contemplate just how little Laila, Hassan, and Khalila deserved to be terrorized by Haashim. He couldn't save them, or anyone else for that matter. Everybody he tried to rescue died, so, for their safety, he should surrender the battle. He would just have to learn to ignore the voice inside him that screamed that they were Bazhir, and so was he, and that it was his duty to save them, because only he could understand them. Their soul was his spirit—filled with honor yet consumed by passions of the flesh, desperate to destroy evil while forever seduced by it, and devoted to justice tempered by mercy while forever squashing violent, vengeful urges. Whether he wanted to be or not, he was their Voice—the harbinger of their joy and anger, as well as the bearer of their knowledge and their ultimate fool. He could no more escape them than he could himself. Their essence coursed through his veins with every beat of his heart. "Let them deal with the monster they have created if they can even see that Haashim is a beast."

"Spoken with all the sympathy and altruism of a teenage boy who would rather be doing something else somewhere else," King Jonathan chided, his tone sharper than a pike. "I expected better of you, Squire."

"You always expect better of me," snarled Zahir, his hands balling into fists. "Sire, in case it slipped your notice, I am a teenage boy, so you can punish me for, just this once, not suiting your whim by behaving like somebody I'm not. You may want me to the next Voice, but I reserve the right to be a moody adolescent."

"Your feelings betray you, Zahir." The king's nostrils flared. "I'd watch them closely if I were you."

"My feelings betray me?" echoed Zahir, blinking in feigned confusion. "Do they stab me in the back, or do they just give me a swift kick up the rump?"

"Your mouth also leads you into trouble." King Jonathan's manner was colder than a Scanran winter, and the war to conquer his temper raged in his cerulean eyes for a long moment before he asked levelly, "What's one of the first things you learned in training to become a knight?"

"Don't cut off your own head with your sword." Zahir figured that he would perform a deadpan routine until his knightmaster lost control. Aggravating the calm king would prove that he could manipulate King Jonathan's emotions as well as his knightmaster could manipulate his. After all, pyrrhic victories were the only ones anyone could hope to attain, and there was a wonderful, destructive meaningless in every pyrrhic victory that matched the emptiness of the universe. "It's very embarrassing when that happens, and people won't take you seriously."

"After that," said King Jonathan, a touch of impatience entering the order, but a wry amusement gleaming in his gaze.

"Your eyes can deceive you," Zahir reeled off, knowing that, if Lord Wyldon were here, he would have been decapitated by now. "Girls are fun but dangerous. Joren has extra cards up his sleeve. Garvey and Vinson will never understand the difference between sixes and nines."

"The truth is in there somewhere." Flashing his pearly teeth in a grin, the king continued, "Allow me to rephrase, Squire. What is the purpose of a knight?"

"To fight for justice. To detect wrongs and make them right." The honest answer had escaped Zahir's lips out of habit before he could stop it. Trying to maintain his impertinence, he added, "To serve as models for very shiny weapons and armor."

"It's the first two that concern me at the present," explained the king somberly. "If you abandon your people, you won't be fighting for justice, nor will you be righting the wrongs committed by Haashim."

"You want me to fight for justice unless it involves my right to marry Cait." Zahir's jaw clenched so tightly it hurt to speak. "You expect me to fix every problem in the world except the ones that forbid me marrying Cait."

"Your immaturity astonishes me." A warning blazed in King Jonathan's eyes as he grasped Zahir's shoulders again. "Take heed, Zahir ibn Alhaz. I tolerate some backtalk from you in private, but you will show more respect for me in public. If I don't have your affection, I will at least have your obedience. During our conference with the Bazhir chiefs, you will not so much as allude to Cait, and you will not argue with me. You will answer the questions put to you in as conventional a fashion as possible, and you will do nothing to drive the chiefs away from you and toward Haashim. If you defy me in this, you will have much cause to regret it."

"Don't worry, Your Majesty." His chin lifting rebelliously, Zahir tugged himself out of his knightmaster's grip. "I will do my duty. My father taught me that doing the right thing isn't something special. It's the minimum. It's where we start each morning, not where we try to end up one day in the future."

With that, he spun on his heel and headed back across the sand toward the village of tents. As he hurried down the sandy streets, he saw women, clay jars balanced on their veiled heads, walking down to the oasis to fetch water for cooking, and a few men outside their tents, readying their tools for the day's work.

He was about to turn onto the lane where Hassan's tent was located when Haashim ibn Ghaazi's hard, frigid voice called out to him, "Zahir ibn Alhaz! Come join me."

Pivoting, Zahir spotted Haashim reclining on a cushion outside an expansive canvas tent, a knife flashing in the air before him as he carved designs into a shepherd's rod. With a pang, Zahir remembered Haashim's blade soaring down to slay Shahla and Aswad.

Thinking that he would rather visit the Black God than speak with Haashim, he turned away, but before he could continue his journey back to Hassan's tent, Haashim shouted, "Let's not be strangers, young man. I think we could be friends if you were so resolved to be my foe."

"I think that your head is so far up your backside that you could chew your food again on its way out," growled Zahir, every inch of his flesh crawling with revulsion at the idea that Haashim could envision them having enough in common to be friends. Still, despite the fact that the last thing he wished to do was draw closer to Haashim, he found himself marching, fists planted on his hips, over to the other chief. "We'll never be friends before the entire world freezes over. We've nothing but our gender and our ancestry in common. If that's enough to make a friendship, I'm a peacock."

"Well, you have been flashing your feathers lately." His lips sliding slowly into a smile as sweet and lethal as honey laced with hemlock, Haashim gestured indolently at another silk cushion resting on the colorful carpet outside the tent. "Please make yourself comfortable. My lovely desert flower, Nasira bint Mahmud, will be stopping by with a pot of tea to break our fast shortly."

"I have my own family to eat with," announced Zahir tersely, refusing to sink onto the cushion he had been offered. "Anyway, I'd rather dine with a Stormwing than with you. At least a Stormwing's stench would be more bearable."

"What odor is so objectionable about me?" asked Haashim, spreading out his palms as though he were an innocent child begging for alms. "Do I just smell of the same courage, honor, and passion for justice that you possess?"

"You smell like a coward who wouldn't recognize justice, honor, or mercy if they slapped you in the face in broad daylight." His jaw clenching, Zahir found his fingers darting outward to clutch onto a white flower blooming on a potted cactus beside him. Realizing that the thorns were pricking his skin and his hands were ripping off the petals, so that everything beautiful and soft about the flower was being destroyed, he pulled his fingers away from the plant.

"Ah, you've been picking the flower from my cactus," commented Haashim, all geniality as he looked at the petals strewn on the sand and the pinpricks of scarlet dappling Zahir's fingers.

"Yes." Not to be outdone, Zahir gingerly examined the needle-sharp spine of the flower, tipped the pale head toward him, and sniffed. Closing his eyes, he sighed with pleasure at the fragrance. It was an ancient, wild perfume: heady, pointed, and tingling like a childhood secret or joke. "It is a pretty thing."

"I always keep cacti with flowers about my tent, because they remind me of my childhood." Haashim gave a brief chuckle. "As a matter of fact, one of my first memories revolves around a cactus with flowers. It was a hot day, I remember that; a bright day, and the sun was heavy in the sky. The smell of the flowers was very strong, as if the sun was beating the fragrance out of them, burning them slowly like incense. I was hiding outside my family's tent, and my finger was bleeding. I guess I must have been playing with the flowered cactus and stabbed myself with a thorn. I can still recall sucking the blood—the way it welled up from this hole in my finger."

"You said you were hiding," Zahir remarked, wondering if it was the same childhood pain that he had suffered at his mother's and father's hands that motivated Haashim's cruelty. If it was, could that even begin to justify the other man's crimes? If it was, could the hurt ever be healed enough that Haashim would want to end the abuse he was inflicting on others? Did he even deserve to be healed after all the agony he had heaped on innocent people? "Why didn't you go into the tent to find a bandage or to get a kiss?"

"My mother got angry if I hurt myself." Haashim shrugged.

"Angry?" Zahir arched an eyebrow curiously.

There was a moment's silence. Then Haashim said abruptly, "It's not our way. Bazhir do not cry or complain. We are born to take care of others. We don't expect others to look after us."

"Yet your finger hurt, didn't it?" pressed Zahir.

"I don't expect you to understand," Haashim replied in a harsh rush. "Your parents shoved you away from the desert before you could learn its ways. Anyway, don't pretend that your parents loved you. If they loved you, they would have kept you. Your family had a fine tent and wealth, and they gave you up. You were their firstborn son, their heir, and they surrendered you to the northerners." Haashim's face was pale, and his hands trembled as he ranted, "They sent you away to a distant place ruled by a strange people. They sent you away from the only home that you had ever known, and let strangers steal the cultural inheritance that should have been yours. Now you have the audacity to come here and say they loved you? _Loved_ you?"

Taking a deep breath, Haashim managed to level out his tone. "Forgive my criticisms of your family, Zahir. You know I have never doubted your goodness or your sincerity, but—and I say this with all respect—there are things you choose not to see. Your principles are noble, but you have been a tool in the hands of a corrupt king. If you truly want to see justice—"

"No lies for me, Haashim ibn Ghaazi," Zahir interrupted. "I will not be caught up in a web of false ideals as you were. Pfeh. Why would I want to hear _you_ tell _me _about nobility and justice?" Here, he laughed, and it was the weariest, bitterest, and most unpleasant sound he had ever made.

"I can offer you power," Haashim purred. "To touch the power I can show you, all you have to do is allow yourself to do so. You just have to relax. We carry the power of the dark within ourselves. Surely, you must know that by now. Certainly, you must have felt it. Half of life, dark to balance light, wiats inside you like an orphan, waiting to be called home. We all desire. We all fear. We are all beset. To know my power is merely to stop lying to yourself—to stop pretending that you don't fear what makes you shudder, and to stop acting as if you don't want what makes your heart thud with desire. Half the day is night. To see truly, you have to learn to see in the dark. When you understand your own evils, you comprehend the evils of others, and that makes them easy to manipulate. My power will show you the dreads and needs of a person—the keys to him."

"That's very fine." Zahir stoked the petals of the flower, making it clear that the plant intrigued him more than Haashim. "I already have power, though. I live in a palace, I'm the chief of an entire tribe, and I'm marked as the next Voice."

"Is there such a thing as too much power?" Haashim mused. "For instance, there was a day when your power was greater than mine, since you were destined to be the next Voice. Now, I have waxed as you have waned. You stand before my tent. I have at my command men that could kill you or your loved ones. I could have them, one by one: Laila, Hassan, your young niece and nephew, and that northern girl who has stolen your heart. Surely you would feel safer if that weren't so. Certainly you would feel freer from fear if you had my power."

"I will never be safe." Zahir gazed unflinchingly into the black holes that were Haashim's eyes. "The universe is large, cold, and very dark. That is the truth. What I love will be taken from me, sooner or later. There is no power, light or dark, that can save me from losing those I love."

"So be angry about that!" exclaimed Haashim. "Hate! Rage! Despair! Allow yourself to admit that you're alone, and you're great, and when the world strikes you it is better to strike back than to turn the other cheek."

"Giving into the dark would not help me conquer it." Zahir shot Haashim a scathing glance. "You see, I don't have to win against the dark. I just have to fight it. That's what being the Voice is all about."

"If you resist me, I will have you and your loved ones killed," hissed Haashim. "My men and I know how to kill."

Zahir's eyes remained fixed, unblinkingly upon Haashim's. Finally, he understood the message that Laila, Hassan, Aisha, Trevor, and the king had all, in different ways been trying to teach him—the lesson that, in his hands, life itself was a weapon. Even in the face of pain, death, and hopes gone as cold as corpses, he would burn like a candle in the darkness, and he would shine like a star in the black eternity of space. "Yes, but my loved ones and I know how to live."


	61. Chapter 61

Among the Living

"You never show up for meals on time," Jaseena snapped the second Zahir entered the tent to see his mother lounging on a cushion before the cypress table, Hassan cradling the twins, and Laila preparing breakfast in front of the fire. "Since the odds dictate that you'd arrive for some meals punctually if you actually cared about being on time, I can only conclude that you don't. It's very presumptuous of you to expect to be fed when you can't even be punctual."

"Laila hasn't finished making breakfast yet," Zahir pointed out, joining Hassan and Jaseena at the table. "I can't be late for a meal that isn't ready yet."

"The meal would be ready if Laila wasn't slower than a sheep in molasses when it came to cooking," blustered Jaseena, glaring reproachfully at her daughter. "Just because Laila doesn't know how to prepare a meal on time that doesn't mean you have an excuse to be late to breakfast."

"If you're so concerned about eating on time, maybe you could help Laila with the cooking," Zahir remarked in his sweetest voice, as Laila carried a pot of steaming tea, a platter of flatbread spread with a nut sauce, and a tureen of dates in goat's milk over to the table.

"I'm much too old for lugging and mixing, boy," snarled his mother, glowering at him as if he had just offered her an unpardonable insult.

"Then you should be old enough to be quiet if all you can think to say is cruel," Zahir responded, meeting her gaze steadily. Even the evil Haashim embodied didn't terrify him so much that he would stand in silent awe of it, which meant that Jaseena's bullying should not have any hold upon him. "If you're too old to do, at least be mature enough to be grateful for what others do on your behalf."

"Those others wouldn't include you." Huffily, his mother folded upon herself as though the entire world had committed an outrageous crime against her and her only recourse was to recoil from it. "You've been scant comfort to your poor, widowed mother while you've been currying favor with the king, making your heart as cold as their weather and as hard as the stones they use to construct the monstrosities they call castles."

"I went north on my father's orders, as tradition dictates." Zahir's jaw clenched. "If you didn't wish to be denied my comfort, you should have fought to keep me closer to you. You shouldn't have thrust me off on strangers if you wanted to ensure that I would develop a warm, soft heart. Who better than a mother to teach her son how to love?"

"I loved your father, and I would never have argued with him, as you well know," answered Jaseena, her manner as cold as a window in midwinter. "I've always done my duty. That's why I now devote myself to passing my wisdom onto younger people. I may not do, but I may certainly correct."

"You've always corrected," observed Zahir dryly. "Why should that I change just because you can no longer do?"

"Your tongue is a sharp sword you'll soon impale yourself upon, rascal." His mother's hands shook with what he assumed was a barely suppressed urge to slap him. Her eyes simmering like coals, she hissed, "How you dare to treat your mother, for whom you should reserve your greatest tenderness and respect, with such contempt is beyond my understanding. I assure you that, if your father were here, he would have removed a layer of skin from your back for your cheek."

"Probably." Refusing to blink or otherwise cringe at the mention of the rod that had dominated his nightmares for the first decade of his life, Zahir shrugged. "Father was always beating me for no real reason, wasn't he?"

"The fact that you don't see that he hit you for good reasons only proves that he should have thrashed you harder." Jaseena's lips thinned. "It's amazing that you are so hard-headed even a rod won't get through to you."

"I'm glad you didn't say thick-skinned," Zahir commented with a flippancy he didn't feel. "I certainly bled and bruised when Father's rod tore into my flesh, didn't I?"

"Yes, but you didn't cry." There was a trace of pride and even understanding in his mother's tone as if she recognized that fierce refusal to surrender to pain in herself and took pleasure in the knowledge that she had passed that defiant streak onto her only son. "You may have felt pain, but you didn't cry."

"On that happy note, perhaps it's time we said a prayer, so we can eat," Hassan cut in, and around the table, heads ducked and hands folded.

After Hassan had led them all through the prayer traditionally recited by the Bazhir before meals, Laila murmured, "Zahir, you looked pale when you came into the tent. I hope you aren't ill."

"He's probably spent too long away from away from the sun," said Jaseena, friendly as a wasp, as she munched on a piece of flatbread. "The absence of the sun makes people ugly. That's why all the northerners are paler than milk curds."

"My paleness had nothing to do with the sun." Irritably, Zahir blew on his steaming tea. "I'd just been speaking the Haashim ibn Ghaazi. His heart is so black that it would make anyone look white. It's one of his few redeeming attributes."

"I'd agree with you, but, in my experience, he brings out the worst, rather than the best, in people," Haashim said grimly. "People who were just a little hungry for power become ravenous for it in his presence. Those who were fair become devoted to petty vengeance when he gives one of his speeches. The brave turn into quivering messes when he threatens their families. Those who once lived according to the law now dedicate themselves to violence and brutality."

"He has no friends, only those who serve him out of hate or fear." Delicately, Laila sipped her tea. "I pity him."

"I can't bring myself to pity a wild horse when his thrashing hooves might be the death of me." Hassan shook his head. "Only when the wild horse has been slain or broken to bridle would I feel safe enough to pity him."

"The wild horse in question wants to trample over you and your family," Zahir said bluntly, his gaze locking on his brother-in-law. "Haashim ibn Ghaazhi wanted to turn me into one of his evil followers, but I refused his generous offer to join with him, so he threatened to kill all of you."

"He's a coward," Hassan growled, spitting out a date seed to express his furious disgust. "To hold a man's family hostage is one of the most despicable actions in the world, and yet he does it almost as often as he draws breath."

"We aren't afraid to die." Laila reached across the cluttered table to pat Zahir's wrist. "Life transcends even death."

"Maybe you aren't afraid to die, but I won't lose you without a fight." Zahir pulled his arm away and lifted his chin truculently. "When I told Haashim ibn Ghaazi that you knew how to live, that's what I meant. I wasn't talking about some nebulous afterlife. I was taking about knowing how to live right now."

"And how would we live now?" Hassan arched an eyebrow. "Would we flee?"

"You should," Zahir burst out. "There's nothing you can gain by remaining here."

"If we run away, Haashim wins," Hassan argued, shaking his head. "If we flee, we show him that he can terrify us into submission. Is that the message you want to send him?"

"No, I'd like to send him the message that he can't go around killing whomever he wishes," retorted Zahir. "The living, not the dead, write history. I'd prefer you were among the living rather than among the dead."

"If we run away, we'll be running into the desert by ourselves," Hassan reminded him, eyes darker than usual. "That would make it very easy for Haashim's men to hunt us down and slaughter us like lambs."

"Surely you have men loyal to you who accompanied you here," Zahir pressed, his determined tone making it more of a statement than a question.

"I do." Somberly, Hassan nodded.

"Take those men with you." Zahir's face was set. "There's some safety in numbers."

"As well as some danger," Hassan commented heavily. "When just our family leaves, there is a chance, however slim, that Haashim's men won't notice our departure, but the more people are involved, the more impossible it is that Haashim won't know that we are going before we have even left."

"That's why you won't sneak out of here like thieves," announced Zahir, as firm as marble. "You'll storm off in a huff at me. You'll make it clear to even the blind and the deaf that you are outraged that I would even suggest that you meet my northern warrior woman. You'll act like the men leaving with you are your supporters in your quarrel with me. As long as you behave like you are my enemy, Haashim will consider you an ally and will not harm you."

"The price of the safety of my family and me is seeming to betray my chief." Hassan's expression soured as if he had just swallowed a lemon. "That's very steep. I don't want to appear disloyal to you, Zahir, lest my appearance of treason should encourage others to actually betray you."

"I have enough real foes that I don't need to worry about imaginary ones jumping out of the woodwork." Zahir's lips twitched wryly before his face hardened again. "Since I have so many enemies, I need my few friends alive, not dead. Rest assured, in seeming to betray me, you are most loyal to me, and, in appearing to scorn me, you show me the greatest love."

For a long moment, Hassan hesitated, studying Zahir closely. Taking advantage of the man's silence, Zahir whispered fervently, "You, Laila, Taymur, Amaya, and my mother have to survive, Hassan. I need to know that the tribe will be in the good hands of you and your son if I die."

"You aren't going to die," Laila interjected, aghast. "Don't talk that way, Zahir."

"I must." Zahir shot her a toothy grin that was more about proving how un-intimidated he was by the prospect of his own death than it was about any kind of amusement. "I'm playing with fire, Laila, and I'm not dumb enough to believe that I won't get burned. I'm just trying not to burn down my whole tent with me."

"I'd die for you, Zahir ibn Alhaz," declared Hassan in a voice as soft as a ghost walking.

"I'd rather you live for me." Gently placing his palms on first Taymur's and then Amaya's foreheads, Zahir went on, "Your children are so beautiful, it would be an honor for me to die fighting to make the desert a better home for them to grow up in."

"You aren't dying," Hassan stated gruffly. "I'll agree to follow your crazy plan as long as you understand that you aren't dying any time soon, and we will be reunited."

"Fine," Zahir agreed with a slight, ironic curl of his lips. "None of us are going to die young as long as we all follow my crazy plan." Then, looking at his sister, he added, "I'm sorry about causing you so much suffering."

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." Briskly, Laila rose, resting the twins in baskets that were seas of blankets. Then, bending to kiss his hair, she said, "I love you, Zahir, but I should start packing up our belongings if we are to leave soon."

A lump the size of a potato swelling in his throat like a bruise, he watched her bustle around the tent, folding up sleeping mats, quilts, and curtains. Over his eyes, a wet film formed, but he blinked it away impatiently. He wanted to drink in the sight of her hands, as tender as silk, dancing over the fabrics as she folded them, so that he could remember the aura of domestic peace she emanated when he was swallowed up in political wars that always made him feel as if he was all alone in the world.

"I should help her." Standing, Hassan offered his hand to Zahir. "I'll see you soon."

"I'll hold you to that promise." Zahir forced himself to smile as he shook Hassan's hand. Then, before he knew it, Hassan was helping Laila pack, and he was left at the table with his mother. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he muttered, "I'll be leaving now, Umm. Farewell."

"I'll assume that you were planning on kissing my cheek like any son who didn't have an icecap for a heart would do before abandoning his mother in the middle of a meal, not that a good son would ever dream of leaving his mother in the midst of a meal." Jaseena, as peevish as ever, sniffed.

"If you truly assumed I would do it, you wouldn't have said anything, Umm." With a sigh, Zahir leaned over to brush his lips across his mother's cheek, which was as crinkly as century-old parchment. His mouth had barely made contact with her skin before he removed his lips from her cheek and turned to go.

"Don't go rushing out of here, boy, before I'm done speaking to you." Jaseena's hands clasping around his wrists like chains halted him before he could take even a step toward the tent's exit. As she spun him roughly around to face him, she stared at him with dark eyes that were like wells of which he couldn't see the bottoms, so that he suddenly felt as if she was suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of death, which prevented her from getting interested in living life or leaving it. Her past, he realized with a start, had been intolerable, and, because that misery was all she understood, she was resolved to always find something to complain about so she wouldn't lose the sorrow that defined her. "I want you to know that your father would have been proud of you. When he was a lad, he was as spirited as a wild horse. Young people always think their generation was the first to rebel against previous ones, but I guarantee you that, almost every night, after his parents had drifted off to sleep, your father and his brother crept out of their family tent. They were the leaders of the night—filling it with more light and life than the day for those of us trapped between childhood and adulthood. They organized horse races across the sand dunes. They invented funny songs accompanied by a million silly dances. I never laughed so loud or so long as I did during those nights. Oh, and I thought those nights and my laughter would never end."

Zahir couldn't imagine his perpetually glowering mother ever laughing, but that wasn't even the most impossible part of the insane picture her words had painted for him. "You mean to tell me that Uncle Kamal and my father used to be the best of pals," he remarked, snickering at the sheer implausibility of this scenario. "Next you'll want me to believe that King Jasson was the Bazhir's most spectacular hero."

"Don't you dare mock me, or I'll pull out your tongue and tan your hide with it," grunted his mother, scowling at him. "Anyhow, I'll have you know that your father was quite close to Kamal until Kamal managed to convince your grandfather to send him off to Persopolis to complete his studies. Then, your father began to resent Kamal since he had escaped the tribe's restrictions in a way your father never would be able to do. At the same time, you uncle started to recognize what it really meant to never be able to rule our tribe, and he began to envy the fact that your father, not him, was destined to be chief. Now, it was when your father was chafing most under all the rules your grandfather expected him to abide by as heir, that he fell in love with me, and I with him."

She paused, two crimson blotches blazing like setting suns in her cheeks. Impulsively seeking to spare her some embarrassment, Zahir said in a rush that caused the syllables to tumble all over each other in their eagerness to explode from his lips, "Father told me how you became pregnant with Laila outside of marriage, and how he wed you so you wouldn't be stoned for fornication."

"And did he tell you how his own father said that he would have to obey every rule if he didn't want to see me stoned?" demanded Jaseena, the apples in her cheeks growing. "Did he tell you how his own father told him that, if he didn't act like the perfect heir, he would have to watch me executed? Did he tell you what it was like for me? Did he tell you how it felt for me to be terrified rather than overjoyed when I conceived my first child? Did he tell you how it felt for me to know that I could only have nine months to left to live? Did he tell you what it was like for me to think that, as soon as I gave birth, I could be stoned? Did he tell you how it felt to have birth so tied up with a horrible fear of death? Did he tell you about how awful it was for me to conceal every aspect of my pregnancy, because I knew that my family would kick me out of their tent if they discovered the situation I was in?"

"Not really." Zahir swallowed hard, and then choked out, "Don't you see that the Bazhir are doing the same thing to Cait as they did to you?"

"We aren't talking about your northern bedwarmer." Jaseena snorted. Then, her manner less acerbic, she muttered, "Anyway, your grandfather crushed your father's spirit. Your grandfather forced your father to follow the rules or lose the woman he loved, so I think your father would be proud to see you trying to break the rules and keep those you love alive. He would admire the guts it takes to want to have your cake and eat it, too."

Zahir, resisting the temptation to point out that having a cake and not eating it was akin to owning a suit of armor and not wearing it in a joust, commented instead, "Father was always beating me for breaking the rules. Somehow, I don't think he'd be any happier to see me violating them now."

"Humph." His mother exhaled gustily, her breath lined with discontent. "The north has turned you into a wimp, forever whining about how your father beat you. You forget that your father never hit you hard enough to break your spirit. You forget that you wouldn't have the nerve to defy convention or Haashim if he had."

"Maybe I have." Something was clogging Zahir's throat, making it difficult for air to flow into his lungs. "Umm, do you love me?"

"Say that again." Jaseena eyed him as though he were an insect she longed to squash.

"Do you love me?" he repeated, wondering why he couldn't have the sort of mother who would have hugged or teased him affectionately for posing such a question. Of course, if he had a mother like that, he wouldn't need to ask if she loved him, since her love for him would have poured out every time she spoke to him and every time she touched him. Love was obvious. It didn't need to be explained or excused. Only the absence of it did.

"I've fed you, clothed you, cleaned up after you when you were too little to do so for yourself, and tried to raise you into a decent man." His mother enunciated each word as if it contained the answer to the greatest mysteries of the universe. "You know that, idiot boy. Doesn't all that work I put into caring for you and raising you properly count for something? Isn't that love, you empty-headed buffoon?"

"That's what I'm asking you, Umm." Zahir lifted his chin "Is it love?"

"Of course it is," snarled Jaseena. "Since you are a young moron, you can think of love as pure, beautiful, and exalted, but, once you've experienced more of life, you'll understand that it's dirty, ugly, and common. It's more work than pleasure, and more pain than joy."

Thinking that it would be unfair to expect a woman who had spent her first pregnancy paralyzed by the fear that she would be stoned as soon as the baby was shoved out of her in a stream of blood, Zahir kissed her on the cheek again, letting his lips linger on her wrinkled skin longer this time.

"I love you, Ummi," he whispered, using the childish endearment he hadn't employed since he was toddling around the tent, learning to talk and walk.

"As well you should." Clucking her tongue, his mother held him at arm's length to examine him as critically as a healer scrutinizing a patient for symptoms of a dreadfully contagious ailment. "I must say that you never looked so good to me as you do now, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"I thought you said just yesterday that I was quite hideous." Zahir grinned rakishly. "How can I be handsome now, Umm?"

"I didn't say that you were handsome. I said that you had never looked so good to me as you do now, but that doesn't mean that you are handsome. Rest assured that you'll always be uglier than a goat's backside." His mother waved a hand at the tent flap in a clear dismissal. "Go away now, and don't forget to look furious at Hassan, or you'll have ruined your brilliant plan before it even has a chance to succeed."


	62. Chapter 62

The Law of Love

"The boy you have chosen to be Voice after you looks like he just crawled out of his mother's womb," commented Nimr ibn Qanit, a chief whom Zahir supposed was a partisan of Haashim's, addressing King Jonathan but eyeing Zahir derisively.

"At least I crawled out instead of being pushed out like most babies," Zahir countered, his fingers clenching the stray strands in the rug upon which all the Bazhir chiefs, King Jonathan, and Queen Thayet were sitting in a circle. "That alone must prove that I'm strong enough to lead the Bazhir."

"In your wildest dreams, perhaps." Nimr's entire clean-shaven, sharp-chinned face twisted into a smirk. "In the real world, which the rest of us inhabit, boy, you haven't demonstrated any greater comprehension of our laws than the stupidest camel."

"Ask me any question you would like Bazhir law." Zahir's chin lifted. "I'm sure I'll be able to answer it."

"Very well." Nimr offered a smile that was plainly more about showing all his teeth than it was friendliness. In conferences, Zahir thought, people were always baring their teeth and pretending it meant amiability. "We'll start off with a simple inheritance question. If a man dies, and his grown son and daughter survive him, what portion of her father's wealth is the daughter entitled to receive?"

"One third of what the son does," replied Zahir quickly.

"What a clever lad," Nimr remarked in the enthusiastic tone a father might employ when praising a five-year-old who was learning to read. "I see you've been studying your inheritance laws, but have you been studying your marriage laws?"

On the opposite side of the circle, Zahir saw King Jonathan stir, but his knightmaster did not speak. Sensing, as the king must have, that he was walking into an ambush, he said, "You may ask me anything you'd like about Bazhir marriage laws."

"Wonderful." Nimr's smile widened, but still it did not reach his eyes. "Now, according to Bazhir law, a Bazhir woman who is not a fornicator may only marry whom?"

"A Bazhir man who is not a fornicator," responded Zahir flatly.

"Yes, because we wouldn't want a Bazhir to be unevenly yoked to a non-Bazhir, which would doom the marriage to the shameful status of an unfruitful failure before it had even begun," Nimr remarked, and, although his voice was indolent, he still managed to emphasize in every syllable that each word contained a special meaning for him. "Our law is very generous to and very protective of our beloved women. Our law guarantees that daughters have the right to petition their fathers to marry them to a Bazhir man, and it protects their right to petition their chief for an appropriate match if their father refuses to make one for them. Of course, that only covers the law of marriage for Bazhir women. It doesn't cover the law of marriage for Bazhir men. Tell me, who can Bazhir men who aren't fornicators marry?"

"Any Bazhir or non-Bazhir women who aren't fornicators." Zahir's jaw set. "The law gives Bazhir men the right to marry outside of the tribe, and that ancient custom won't be changed because xenophobia has become popular in the desert."

"Xenophobia has nothing to do with it," cut in Haashim ibn Ghaazi, who was sitting diagonally from Zahir, and Zahir, who had been wondering when the man would start spewing his bile, resisted the temptation to vomit up his breakfast as he listened to Haashim purr, "Bazhir do not fear northerners. We just love our culture too much to let them taint it or crush it. Love, not fear or hatred, motivates us."

"The northerners can keep their culture, and we can keep ours, even if we have contact with them," Zahir insisted, even though he suspected that none of the chiefs would listen nonetheless agree with him.

"They are different from us," hissed Haashim, fires burning in his cheeks and veins pulsing in his neck. "Even you can't deny that, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"I wouldn't attempt to," announced Zahir, lifting his nose in the air defiantly. "Northerners are different from Bazhir, just like men are different from women, and the elderly are different from the young. The differences aren't the problem, though. The problem is your hostile attitude toward them. Not everyone who is different from the Bazhir has to be our enemy."

"Yet, I'm certain that you would agree that all those who break our laws are our enemies." Haashim's lip curled.

"Well, the worst of such adversaries would, of course, be those who claimed that they were acting according to our laws when, in reality, they were not," riposted Zahir, forcing his mouth into a smile that made him feel as if he had a lockjaw.

"Hmm." Haashim's eyes glittered like blood-soaked daggers, and Zahir felt his stomach squirm like a worm as his brain tried to calculate from what angle Haashim would launch his next assault. "What would you say should be the fate of a girl who runs away from her family? Should she be stoned?"

"Naturally, she should be stoned." Swallowing his nerves, Zahir forced his tone to remain as cool as water from a mountain spring, telling himself that Haashim could not possibly be alluding to Aisha. No one could still think she was alive. Everyone believed her to have died in the desert. "That's the law, but, in the interest of justice, she'd have to be stoned by the person who had never done anything wrong."

"The law doesn't require that." Haashim glowered, his expression as ominous as a thunderhead hovering over a tumultuous sea.

"My interpretation of the law does." Ice freezing in his veins where hot blood had once flowed, Zahir met Haashim's gaze, and, against his will, he found himself being drawn into the black holes that were the man's eyes for a moment—for just long enough to see a bloody execution from the perspective of the boy that was still buried inside Haashim.

_Like Zahir, Hasshim had been the first and only son of a chief who mistrusted anything newer than the earth and sky. When Haashim was seven, he had been as innocent as any boy could be. He had loved racing his horse through the desert, feeling the wind batter his cheeks and watching the sand whiz by beneath his mount's hooves. The desert had been his home until he realized that his father really was going to stone his sister Neha and her lover Ulfat (who wasn't her husband) for something called adultery—a grave crime and a heavy sentence he did not understand. _

_He only began to understand the sentence when he watched jeering crowds of men and women escort Neha and Ulfat, both of them dressed in black, to the center of the tents where the tribe fires usually burned into the darkness at night. He understood as he saw men dig two holes that were big enough to swallow his father to the shoulder, and he saw the leering masses tossing stones menacingly from hand to hand. _

_He understood far more than he would have liked as the shaman asked Neha and Ulfat if they had any last words, and he saw that both of their tongues, which always were full of laughter and song, had been eaten by the expressions of terror on their gaunt faces that had once been flushed with health and love. _

_His heart bled in his chest when he saw the first specks of Neha's blood freckle the sand. Then, even though he closed his eyes tightly, he could hear the stones slamming into Neha's and Ulfat's tender, yielding flesh. That sickening sound made him feel as if it was his own skin cutting and bruising. He could taste blood in the air, and it was then that he knew he wasn't part of a tribe, but of a mob. The desert wasn't a home for him or for anyone else. It was just a cruel place where people hurt and killed on another. _

_He would have cried until his own salt had rubbed into the invisible wounds the stones had inflicted upon him, but he knew that his father would thrash him if he shed so much as a tear on behalf of his dying adulterous sister. Just thinking of dying buried up to his shoulders while rocks pelted into his head made him feel claustrophobic and as though he was choking on his own blood. Any death at all was better than the one brought about by stoning. _

"Since you are so perfect, it is only fitting that you should be judge and executioner, Haashim ibn Ghaazi," murmured Zahir, regaining his own mental identity and trying to use his newfound knowledge of Haashim to his advantage. "You should be the one to dress the criminals in black. You should be the one to lead them, jeering, to their deaths. You should be the one to collect the stones and dig the graves. You should be the one who casts the first and last stone, and you should stone everyone. You should see everybody's blood drench the ground. You should see everyone buried in the dark sand. You should be all alone in the desert."

"You mock me," growled Haashim, his scowl deepening.

"Not at all," Zahir drawled. "I honor you."

Before Haashim could question this statement, King Jonathan put in, his voice as crisp as sand, "Now that we all understand one another better, I think it would be wise if we ended this meeting. We'll reconvene in a few days once we've all had time to reflect upon what we have learned here."

Exchanging looks that established more plainly than any mutinous words ever could that they were as far from satisfied with this meeting as it was possible to be, the Bazhir chiefs rose. With the most perfunctory of head bows to the king, they trailed out of the tent.

"Look out for your family, Zahir ibn Alhaz," Haashim hissed in his ear, offering a jerky head bow to King Jonathan. Then, before Zahir could respond to this barely veiled threat, Haashim had exited the tent to bestow more joy upon other fortunate individuals.

"You could have intervened earlier, sire," observed Zahir curtly as soon as the tent flaps had slapped shut in Haashim's wake, releasing some of the terror and fury welling within him upon his knightmaster.

"The Bazhir aren't convinced that you are worthy of being the next Voice," King Jonathan remarked, his cerulean eyes vivisecting Zahir. "It is you, not me, who must show them that they are wrong about that, Squire."

"You're the one who chose me for the task," snapped Zahir, glaring at his knightmaster. "I didn't nominate myself for the position, Your Majesty."

"And Ali Mukhtab picked me to be his successor," the king responded, his tone and eyes mild. "However, when the Bazhir leaders questioned my suitability for the post, he left me to answer them for myself, as I would have to do when I ruled over them."

"Splendid," Zahir snarled. "If he is still alive in any plane, I'll kill him before I kill you. Is that some consolation to you, sire?"

"Regicide is not a joking matter, Zahir," his knightmaster pointed out dryly.

"I wasn't joking," declared Zahir, all haughtiness. "I was dead serious, Your Majesty."

"Well, speaking of things that are dead serious, offending Haashim ibn Ghaazi is dead serious, Zahir." Every trace of humor had vanished from King Jonathan's face as he gazed grimly at Zahir. "I heard him warn you about your family."

"Don't worry about them," Zahir said, telling himself that it would be impossible for Haashim to know that Aisha was alive, nonetheless what her whereabouts were. "I've already figured out how to protect them. They will not suffer any more on my behalf than they already have. Hassan has pretended to argue with me over my relationship with Cait, and is taking his family back to our tribe. Since he seems to have fallen out with me, Haashim will not bother him, as Haashim will see him as something of an ally."

"I'm happy to hear that." The king's expression remained as somber as a tombstone as he continued, "Still, you can't essentially insist on your right to marry Cait at meetings like this, Zahir ibn Alhaz."

"I'll always insist on having the rights that ancient Bazhir law entitles me to, sire." Zahir's jaw clenched. "Otherwise, at the rate things are deteriorating in the desert, my sister's children won't have any rights under the law at all."

"If you expect to lead people, you have to make compromises, Squire," snapped King Jonathan, his blue eyes blazing like the hottest part of a flame.

"I won't compromise with the embodiment of evil in this desert," Zahir snarled, his hands balling into fists as his jaw tightened still further. "Anyway, Your Majesty, it's you, not me, who expects me to rule."

"Now, you're just being obstinate." King Jonathan's voice was soft now, but that somehow made the irritation flooding it all the more pronounced.

"Dear, may I offer my opinion?" asked Queen Thayet in her smoothest fashion, resting her palm gently upon her husband's arm.

"Always, my love." The king triumphed over his temper enough to give his wife a slight grin.

"Good." Fixing her gaze on Zahir, the queen smiled, managing to increase her already almost otherworldly beauty. "Zahir ibn Alhaz, although we do not agree on many political issues, I do respect you because you have proven yourself to be brave, compassionate, and strong in every sense of that word. I think that you are just the person the Bazhir need to follow my husband as Voice, since you value the traditions of your culture and yet are willing to make some concessions to the modern world we inhabit."

"I sense, Your Majesty, that the flattery will soon end as the demands begin." Zahir's eyes narrowed, because he would not fall victim to her compliments or her charisma as he once had to her spouse's.

"Not exactly." There was a sorrowful edge, as jagged as a broken bone, to Queen Thayet's smile now. "I want you to understand that I really would have liked to support your desire to marry Cait. I would have loved to see the Bazhir and the northerners united in such a way, and it would have pleased me to know that young love had prevailed for a change. I knew that the Bazhir would oppose the prospect of you marrying Cait, but I didn't realize that the situation in the desert was so volatile, or else I would never have endangered you and Cait by advocating that she come here with you. I do believe that it is an important part of being a leader to push your people to reform in ways that they could never have imagined, but, Zahir, you must understand that you can only push people so far before they will revolt. Right now, the Bazhir won't stand for being pushed much further, even by one of their own."

"In other words, you don't think I should be allowed to marry Cait, either," muttered Zahir bitterly. "What a relief to know that everyone is united in their disapproval of Cait and me being together. I'm glad that northerners and Bazhir can agree about something, after all."

"I wish that I could take your side," the queen told him quietly. "My mother, as you might know, was a Kmir, and my father was a Sarain lowlander, so I am the product of what you might call a mixed marriage. My parents married for love without the consent or approval of the Kmiri or the lowlanders. I had to watch as my parents' loving marriage disintegrated into an angry, resentful mess because of the bad blood between their respective cultures, which neither of them were willing to truly abandon. That experience has left me with a great sympathy for those who would dare to marry someone from a different ethnic group and with a desire to stop the animosity that exists between so many cultural groups. However, you must understand that now a marriage between a northerner and a Bazhir would do more harm than good."

"You don't know that," argued Zahir, lifting his chin.

"Zahir." Queen Thayet's tone was gentle but uncompromising. "The time is rapidly approaching when you will have to make a decision between your people and Cait. You can have her or you can be the next Voice. You can't be both her husband and the Voice, because the Bazhir would not permit that. Accept that, and make your choice with both eyes open to the truth. My only advice for you is that you shouldn't be too hasty to forsake leading your people for what you believe to be true love. After my father died, I fled Sarain because I feared being married off to some brute to bolster his claim to the position of warlord or being assassinated. Tortall has become my home and I love serving its people, but I abandoned my first home and my first people. I will always regret that. Every time I found a school, grant commoners another right, enhance the role of women in society, or do any of the many other things I do as a monarch, I feel guilty, imagining myself being able to achieve a similar reform in Sarain if I hadn't fled from my responsibilities there. I don't want you tortured by that same guilt, Zahir. I don't want you asking yourself what you could have done for your people if you hadn't been so focused on fulfilling your own desires. I don't want you wondering if your love of Cait prevented you from serving the people you loved. At least make your decision knowing the true price that you will pay if you marry Cait."

"It's not simple. I'm pretty sure nothing is simple anymore." Zahir bit his lip and tried to pretend he didn't feel the tears prickling like pine needles at his eyes. "I love my people, and I love Cait. Why can't I love them both? Why are you and the Bazhir forcing me to pick when Cait isn't so blasted possessive of me? Why shouldn't I love her more than I love you and the Bazhir when she is willing to let me go if I want to be free to serve my people without her? Why should I feel guilty about being ready to do anything for my people but cut apart and eat my own bleeding heart? Why shouldn't I be allowed to keep my own heart?"

"You can only love one person, idea, or thing above all other people, ideas, or things," explained King Jonathan, swatting Zahir's knee lightly. "I've told you that before. It's about time you unclogged your ears."

"Well, I certainly don't love _love _the most," exploded Zahir, hysteria growing like a particularly virulent disease in his chest. "I've been beaten, I've killed, and I've seen people I would have died to save perish. Never have I shed a tear in hatred or in pain. Only love has ever made me cry. Only love has ever brought my world crashing down around my ears. Only love has made me crumble to my knees. How can you ask me to love my people knowing that?"

"You already love your people," his knightmaster reminded him gingerly. "That's why you are in this pain.

"I can't take any more love," Zahir shouted, his cheeks flushed like rising suns in his vehemence. "Why is it in me? Can't I refuse it? Can't you let me refuse it? Love killed Trevor, so what do you think it is going to do to me?"

"You can't chose not to love." King Jonathan clasped his shoulder. "We love without our consent. Only in love can we feel as though we have won when we have lost everything. Only in love can we be happy even when we are suffering. Only in love can we be most exalted when we are on our knees. We can't decide whether or whom we will love, but we can decide what we will do with our love and how much we sacrifice for it. That's what you need to consider when you choose between Cait and your people."

"I hate goodbyes," Zahir whispered, his lower lip trembling as he thought that what made goodbye so awful was that sometimes goodbyes were all some people could ever have. Not that he or Cait would be those sort of people. He wasn't ready to surrender yet. If he could save Hassan, Laila, his mother, his niece, and his nephew, he could keep Cait in his life forever.

"Nobody likes goodbyes," King Jonathan informed him wryly. "When we're glad to bid someone or something farewell, we say good riddance, not goodbye."

Uncheered and unamused, Zahir shoved himself to his feet, grunting, "I need to go for a walk. I have to be alone with my own thoughts before I go insane."


	63. Chapter 63

Knots of Love

Frowning, Zahir looked around the Riders' tent for the third time, once again, not seeing Cait. She should have been here, because he had memorized her schedule enough to know that she wasn't on duty right now, but she wasn't sleeping on her mat, talking with a friend, or playing chess with a squad-mate.

Irrationally irritated that she hadn't materialized the moment he needed to speak with her-that she had a life apart from him that sometimes superseded his needs the way he had a life apart from her that overshadowed her—Zahir wended through the snoring and chattering soldiers until he reached a sweaty, flushed Keir, who was sprawled on his sleeping mat, only his open eyes indicating that he was awake.

"What a strange stranger approaches," Keir remarked, greeting Zahir with a slight wave.

"What a marvelous host you are," retorted Zahir, smirking as he took a seat at the foot of Keir's sleeping mat. "You really make me feel welcome and at ease."

"I can't make you feel at ease when I'm burning up," Keir grumbled. "I don't have the energy to sleep or wipe away my own sweat. I'm turning into quite a disgusting lowlife here."

"Well, the desert has been to known to bring out the best in people." Zahir snickered. Then, geeting down to the business, he asked, "Have you seen Cait?"

"Yes," Keir replied. "She and your sister went riding with some Bazhir girl named Nasira or Nasuada or something."

"Why did Nasira take a ride with Aisha and Cait?" demanded Zahir, his forehead furrowing. "How did she know who Aisha was, and why did she want to meet Cait?"

"From the sound of it, Nasira recognized Aisha at yesterday's celebrations and wanted to speak with her in a private setting," Keir responded, shrugging. "And she wanted to meet Cait, because she was interested in meeting the girl you are in love with."

"I see." Zahir nodded, wondering why he felt as suspicious as an ant about to be squashed. "Did they invite you to ride with them?"

"No." Again, Kair shrugged. "It was one of those girls-only events, apparently."

"Probably about empowering the female gender by usurping traditionally masculine roles and abandoning proper female ones." Zahir snorted. "Lovely. If only I were a girl, I could have come along, too, and had the time of my life."

"Even if they had invited me, I wouldn't have gone, because I am too hot and too exhausted to even think about riding," muttered Keir. "As for the politics of gender, I can't bring myself to care about that much when breathing seems to take more energy than I have."

"I see that you have the energy to complain about how tired you are, though." Zahir rolled his seyes. "Anyway, it's not about politics. It's about ethics."

"Apparently, politics are always about ethics." Keir closed his eyes. "Even the most corrupt nobles claim they are concerned with ethics, not politics."

"I notice that you only refer to the politics of corrupt nobles and say nothing about corrupt commoners," observed Zahir dryly. "Is there a reason for your blatant discrimination?"

"Obviously." Keir's lip twitched. "Only nobles have the time and energy to worry about politics or ethics. The common people of Tortall are too busy slaving away to pay their taxes to worry about politics or ethics."

"That is, in itself, a political statement," pointed out Zahir, rising. "Well, I won't interrupt your rest any longer. See you later."

As Keir mumbled a drowsy farewell, Zahir made his way through the crowded tent again. Stepping outside once more, the sun glinting off the sand and piercing into his irises, he headed in the vague direction of the oasis, wondering what he would even say to Cait when he had the chance to speak to her.

How did a young man separate himself from the girl he loved? Did he pretend that he didn't love her any more so she could hate him in peace? Did he tell her that he loved her but cared more about a people that despised her than he did about her? Did he try to convince her that the break was best for both of them when he wasn't thinking about either them but about his people? Should he be gentle with her—try to prevent her from feeling the inevitable heartbreak—or should he be harsh with her so that neither of them deluded themselves into believing that they could have a second chance at their romance? Would she cry when he told her that they couldn't be together any more, and, if she did, would he have be able to turn away from her? Would she maintain her composure, accepting his rejection with a cool grace, and forcing him to be the one to shatter?

Mithros, he cursed inwardly. He had never imagined that he would have to go through this. Before he had met Cait, he had pictured himself marrying whichever Bazhir girl most benefited his tribe, providing for her and having children by her. Yes, he had dreamed of marrying Nasira, but he wouldn't have been devastated if the welfare of his tribe had required that he wed somebody else. He would have accepted that without any complaint and devoted himself to being a good, affectionate husband to whoever the girl happened to be. Cait had ruined that. She had made him understand what it meant to prefer one woman to all others. Now whatever marriage he had to make for the good of his people would be tainted by his memory of her.

Up ahead, two walking shadows caught his attention, because, since he left the Riders' tent, he had not spotted anyone else on the lane. Squinting, he recognized one of the shapes as Khalila and the other as—it couldn't be, could it?—Nasira.

"Nasira," he shouted, hurrying toward the young woman, and expecting the features he could see through Nasira's veil to solidify into someone else's face, but they never did. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be riding with Aisha and Cait?"

"What's this about riding with Aisha and Cait?" Confusion shining in her eyes, Khalila glanced from Zahir to Nasira. "You didn't say anything about that to me, Nasira."

"That's because I'm didn't have any plans to ride with them." As if to make it more difficult for Zahir to see her eyes, Nasira fiddled with her veil. "I don't know how you got the mistaken impression that I was going to ride with them, Zahir."

"Keir told me that they went for a ride with you," Zahir told her icily. "Why would he lie to me about something like that?"

"Why would I lie to you?" Nasira stopped readjusting her veil and began straightening the creases of her dress.

"You are close to Haashim," snapped Zahir. "Maybe he has corrupted you as he has so many others. Tell me, if you aren't lying to me, why aren't Aisha and Cait in the Riders' tent?"

"Why would I know that?" Nasira blustered. "They're probably on duty or something."

"I know their schedules," snarled Zahir. "They aren't on duty. Stop lying to me."

"You want me to stop lying?" There was an odd, almost eager gleam in Nasira's eyes now. "Well, then you better be prepared to hear the truth. I did go riding with your dear little sister and your precious girlfriend. I did return from my ride, but they won't—ever. Haashim and his supporters captured them, and they are probably dead by now. It was so easy. Neither of your beloved ladies thought to bring any real weapons when riding with a friend."

"Aisha trusted you," snarled Khalila, and Zahir marveled that she could speak at all. His mind was still struggling to accept what Nasira had told him—that she was a traitor and that two of the women he loved best were at Haashim's mercy. Although he had forced the truth out of Nasira, he hadn't been ready to hear it. "And you betrayed her at the first opportunity. Vicious vixen! How could you talk to me as though you hadn't done anything wrong when you had just finished doing something so terrible. I pitied you because first Nadir and then Haashim forced themselves upon you, but now I see that sympathy is unnecessary, because you're a monster, and that's why such beasts were attracted to you."

"I'm not a monster," Nasira hissed. "I love, and beasts don't love. I betrayed Aisha and Cait because I love."

"Who do you love?" Zahir spat, his jaw clenching and unclenching. "That vile bastard Haashim?"

"Oh, Zahir, if you were any stupider, you'd need to be watered twice a day." Nasira glared at him as if he had been the one to betray her. "I love you. I agreed to help Haashim kidnap Aisha because you needed to see what happens to Bazhir who defy our customs and try to act like northerners. You had to understand that you must marry a Bazhir girl, not some gender-confused northerner. Cait needed to be eliminated so you would have the freedom to marry a Bazhir girl. Aisha and Cait have to die so you can live and love, don't you see?"

"I see that you are selfish and delusional." The words spewed like bile out of Zahir's mouth, making him feel sicker than ever at heart. "Don't you dare pretend that you've done your best to have Aisha and Cait killed for my benefit when I love both of them so much I would die to save them. Hurting or killing them is worse to me than hurting or killing me, so don't pretend that you love me. If you love me, you would never hurt anyone I love. All you did was lust after me, and your lust is going to ruin everything for everyone."

"No, you ruined everything for everyone when you rejected me." Defiant tears streaked down Nasira's black veil. "We could have been such a happy couple, but you refused to marry me even when the Voice told you to. You made me sink to the level I did. I _fell_ in love with you because you wouldn't raise me up in love."

"Don't speak to me of your love for me." Zahir gritted his teeth. "I'll cut your tongue out before I hear another word on the subject. Just tell me where Haashim took Aisha and Cait."

"If I do, will you love me?" asked Nasira, blinking away the tears in her eyes.

"I'll hate your traitorous hide less," Zahir growled by way of compromise.

"Then I'll tell you that Haashim and his men have taken them away to Black City." A slight smile curved Nasira's lips. "I think they'll pay the price for their crimes there."

"What crimes, you harridan?" Khalila scoffed, her entire frame quivering with fury. "Are they guilty of loving the same man as you? Are they condemned for being better loved by him than you are? Is it your jealousy they're paying for?"

"I don't have time for this." Zahir spun on his heel and hurried down the lane toward the pole outside the king's tent where his mare was tethered. He had to rescue Aisha and Cait before it was too late. Of course, it might already be too late. Haashim might have already tied them to the cold, unyielding marble altar. He might have already torn into their flesh with his knife, making their warm, red blood pour like scarlet rivers onto the chilly, white stone. He might have already sliced out their tongues so they couldn't cry out for help or in anguish, not that either of them would have cried anyway. They were tough, and they were alive—not dead or bleeding on some cruel Black City altar. By the time Zahir arrived in Black City, they would have defeated Haashim and his men, and they would tease Zahir for trying to ride to their rescue as if they couldn't save themselves.

That was what he told himself, and he was so caught up in visions of Aisha's and Cait's cheerful mockery of his masculine ego that he jumped when Khalila called after him, "Wait for me, Zahir! I have to get my mare from outside my father's tent."

"Don't be an imbecile," said Zahir brusquely, pivoting to face her. "This fight has nothing to do with you."

"It has everything to do with me." Khalila's voice, harder than he had ever heard it, rang down the street. "Aisha is my best friend, and if you think I'm going to let her die without doing everything in my power to save her, you don't know me at all."

"You'll only be in the way." Zahir shook his head.

"I won't be in the way," Khalila countered sharply. "I'm a mage, and if you remember any good stories from your childhood, you'll know how useful mages can be in a fight."

"Fine." Deciding that he didn't have time to argue with his sister's foolish friend, Zahir turned away and tossed over his shoulder, "Come if you must, girl, and on your own stupid head be it. Get your horse and try to make sure it isn't the last thing you do."

"It won't be." He could hear Khalila shout as she dashed off toward her tent. "And if you dare to leave here without me, Zahir ibn Alhaz, rest assured that I will catch up with you and give you a message about how much I don't appreciate being abandoned by carving the words into your forehead with a dagger."

Khalila had only just ceased pestering him, allowing him to travel another couple of feet, before Nasira called, "I'm coming too."

"What is this?" demanded Zahir, frustration racing though him as he whirled around to face the woman he would never be able to see as anything more than a traitor. "A cavalcade?"

"You'll need all the help you can get." Nasira shrugged, her eyes locked on his.

"Not from you," responded Zahir curtly. "You're already proven that I shouldn't trust you any further than I can throw you during a sandstorm with the wind blowing in the opposite direction."

"I've already proven that I will do anything for you," Nasira corrected crisply. "Haashim loves me, and I will use that to keep you alive, because I love you and I would sooner kill Haashim than see you die."

Wishing grimly that Nasira had loved him less and wondering dourly if crazy love was any kind of love at all or the only sort of love in the world, Zahir ran back to the royal tent, focusing on his breathing and his heartbeat to keep images of a battered Cait and a bloody Aisha out of his mind. When he reached the outside of the tent, he untied and mounted Sufia, then spurred her toward the outskirts of the tribe.

The temptation to ride off to Black City without Khalila and Nasira didn't have time to roar too strongly within him, because he had barely arrived at the outskirts when two mares with Khalila and Nasira in the saddles, trotted up beside Sufia. He glanced at the two girls, saw the hardness in Khalila's gaze and the pale circles surrounding Nasira's eyes, and gave a short nod.

All three of them nudged their horses into a gallop, and then, as they raced past the oasis, into a canter. The wind ripped through Zahir's clothing, and it was the sound of the whole world trying to tear him from everyone he held dear. The desert sand pounded by beneath Sufia's solid hooves, and it was the sound of Aisha's heart struggling to beat. His breath thudded in and out of his lungs, and it was the sound of Cait's breath sailing from her for the last time…

They rode ever onward through the barren, parched landscape toward the dark, damning fingers of Black City, but they never seemed to get any closer to the condemning, black fingers, which refused to solidify into buildings…Then, before Zahir could begin to understand how it had happened, dark shadows were looming over them, and they had reached the gates of Black City.

A terrible scent like the rusty odor of old blood mingling with too sweet flowers that could not conceal the stench of a rotting corpse seemed to blow out of the gates across their faces. The horses, as though catching the scent of death and decay, whinnied as their owners slipped off them and tied them to the gates.

"I'll be back soon," Zahir reassured his mount, rubbing her nose.

Sufia tossed her mane, as if to state that she doubted very much that this would be the case, and then neighed softly, as though she were already mourning him.

Zahir had no intention of admitting it to his horse, but he didn't want to go inside Black City any more than he wanted to jump into a raging fire. Something deep within him revolted at the sight of the dark stone structures. He rarely felt fear, but he felt it hammering in his veins now. Every instinct inside him screamed for him to run away from the city, but something more powerful than instinct kept him from fleeing. His younger sister and Cait were in there, and he had to save them. The more horrifying the place was, the more imperative it was that he not abandon them there.

Taking a deep breath that flooded his lungs with the fetid air, he stepped through the gates with Nasira and Khalila on either side of him. There was no sand in Black City, no dust—nothing to indicate that centuries had passed since people had lived there under the awful reign of the Nameless Ones. The street before them was made of hard, bare stone that shone like obsidian in the sunlight. Their shoes slapped against the stone, and the sound of their shoes hitting the street resounded from the walls of the towering edifices surrounding them before fading into silence.

"Where did Haashim take Aisha and Cait?" Khalila hissed to Cait.

"I-I don't know," whispered Nasira, staring at the mosaics of beasts torturing people that covered the walls of the buildings.

"Well, you're about as useful as a grave robber in a crematorium, in that case, aren't you?" muttered Khalila savagely.

"Thanks for adding to the atmosphere." Zahir's jaw set. "I think we have to go to the temple where the Nameless Ones performed all their sacrifices. The temple should be in the center of the city."

"Wonderful," Khalila remarked wryly as they continued down the road. "I really wanted to get a better sense of the community."

They turned right onto a wider boulevard, and it suddenly struck Zahir that there wasn't anything living in sight besides the three of them—not a cactus or a desert shrub. Nothing living could thrive in a place where the ancient stones wept tales of blood and terror. This entire city had been constructed as a tribute—a monument—to evil and the stones could never forget the horrors that had happened here. This place might have been deserted for centuries, but it was still a throbbing locus of evil. Here was where hundreds of Bazhir had served the Nameless Ones, who had stolen their souls and whose evil could not be contained by any circle of fire.

They rounded a sharp corner, causing Zahir to wonder if the corners of Black City were so abrupt in order to catch beings off-guard, and found themselves in the main square of the city. The square was a broad, flat stretch of stone, carefully polished and yet reflecting no light, so that when Zahir stepped onto it with the others, he felt like he were walking over an abyss, and one false move would send him plummeting into a bottomless pit.

The building in the center of the square called to him the way a prostitute drew a soldier who had been on border patrol too long. The sides of the building were columns of black stone, and the roof separated itself from the pillars with a layer of carvings gilded with gold. Topping a long flight of steep stairs, great doors beckoned.

He, Khalila, and Cait climbed up to the doors, feeling smaller and smaller with every step. The doors stood open and waiting, as though ready to swallow them whole. Like the stones of the city, the dark wood of the door was lined with exotic images etched in gold.

Shouts of anger, triumph, and blood lust echoed from within, and, her eyes as wide as a harvest moon, Khalila hissed, "Are you sure we should go in, Zahir? It could a trap to get you."

"So could anything," answered Zahir. Then, filling his actions with more courage and confidence than he felt, he stepped across the threshold.

He could see a circle of shouting men surrounding the altar, but he couldn't see what was on the altar, and he was reluctant to attack if he couldn't locate Aisha and Cait. Concealing himself to reconnaissance further, he leaned behind a pillar, yanking Khalila beside him and shoving Nasira behind another column.

From his new vantage point, Zahir was able to appreciate how different the structure was from every temple he had ever entered before. Although the Bazhir tended to confine their worship to tents and firesides, he had been in several temples in the north. The temples in Tortall had napes of grandeur, but also quiet niches for private reflection. There were always flowers at the feet of statues and bright candles on the altars draped in silk. The Tortallans believed that beauty was an attribute of the divine and encouraged it in their places of worship. The play of colorful light from the stained glass windows streaking across the wooden pews, and the grace of gently curving statues—the Tortallan temples had been designed as places of beauty and comfort as well as rigor.

It was clear that this was a place that had always been and would always be ruled by fear. The lines of this temple were harsh. The walls were high, but narrowed slightly as they rose to create a sensation of being trapped. Angles were slightly off in a way Zahir realized was calculated to intimidate and unbalance beings. There were no openings to light or air. There were only cold stone, massive columns, and hard floors.

He could feel the fear that ruled here—the many people who had come here to learn evil, and the ones who had come naively, searching for some kind of enlightenment, and had been destroyed by their own desires. Here the Nameless Ones had sacrificed their victims. Here bloodlust pooled into aggression. Zahir shuddered, feeling each wasted life and gruesome death.

"What are we doing here, anyway?" whispered Khalila. "How could we have hoped to win against them?"

He turned to look at her, and saw an old Bazhir man on his knees, begging. He blinked and the vision vanished, leaving him to meet the moist eyes of Khalila.

"We will save Aisha and Cait because we have to, and because nobody else can." He meant to go on, but his whisper trailed off into oblivion as he clasped her shoulder and felt the knots of tension coiled there. Instead of him giving her comfort, she was giving him dread, and the twist of terror at the corner of her eyes brought a similar twist to his pounding heart.

"I heard something," shouted one of the angry men by the altar. "Who's here?"

"Tut, tut," chided Haashim. "We can't have our unexpected guests know that we've been expecting them, can we? Are we so rude?"

His cover ruined, Zahir leapt out from behind the pillar, ignoring Khalila's moan, and snarled, "Stop playing games, Haashim. Give me back my sister and Cait."

"Zahir ibn Alhaz!"Haashim's voice resounded throughout the temple, distorting the syllables of Zahir's name. "Tremble before me."

"I think you may have confused me with some other Zahir ibn Alhaz." Snorting contemptuously, Zahir edged closer to the men by the altar, his hand resting upon his sword hilt. "One weak enough to tremble before you."

"Bring him to me," Haashim snapped at the two men standing beside him, but before the men or Zahir could move, Nasira darted down the aisle.

Flinging herself into Haashim's arms, Nasira pleaded, "Don't hurt him."

"You brought him here," growled Haashim. His hands closed around her neck. She gasped in protest, and he only tightened his grip on her throat. Zahir wanted to move to save her—to save them all—but he found that his legs were frozen, as Haashim finished in a thundering tone that rattled the pillars throughout the room, "I loved you, Nasira. I loved you so much that I couldn't see you for what you are—a traitorous whore—but it's always those closest to us that we can't see clearly, isn't it, my dear?"

With that, Haashim gave Nasira's throat a final, sharp squeeze, and she collapsed onto the unyielding stone floor.

"It's about time you learned to keep your disgusting hands to yourself," Zahir snapped, unfreezing himself, tugging his sword out of its scabbard, and launching himself down the aisle toward Haashim.


	64. Chapter 64

Black Holes and White Fountains

Landing smoothly, Zahir let himself fall thoughtlessly—instinctively—into the prowling assessment of an opponent that presaged every duel to the death.

Eyes intent, and a small, sly smile lurking in the shadows at his lips, Haashim matched him step for step. "Ready?" he purred.

"Always." Zahir nodded, and their lethal dance began, as Haashim brought his sword crashing down, and Zahir parried the blow gracefully.

The men in the circle around the altar shifted, their hands drifting toward their sword sheaths, as if they were planning to draw their weapons to assist Haashim. Zahir knew he should have been overwhelmed by the thought, but somehow he didn't care about the numbers arrayed against him. As long as he was fighting to save Aisha and Cait, nothing mattered.

Khalila, who had apparently crept closer to the altar while concealing herself behind pillars, shrieked, "Leave him alone!"

Out of the corner of his eye, as he parried another one of Haashim's attacks and launched an offense of his own, Zahir saw her raise a ball of thread. Swiftly, her fingers ran through the thread, knotting it into a weird pattern, and the men whose palms had dropped to their swords could not move their hands to withdraw their weapons.

Zahir's battle with Haashim waged ever onward. Strike and block. Attack and parry. Offense and defense. Leap and spin. Slash and dodge. It required all the thought in the world and no thought at all.

From what had to be at least a thousand leagues away, he could hear the men cursing Khalila and could hear her scolding, "Now, now, that's no way to talk to a lady."

Perhaps the men would have questioned, in as derogatory a manner as possible, whether Khalila was a lady, but they were denied the chance as invisible knots bound their legs together and then tripped them, so they toppled like gigantic monuments onto the marble floor.

When they fell, they revealed the altar, and Zahir thought that what lay on the cold stones could have driven anyone mad. A slender young woman was tied there, but she wasn't resisting the shackles around her arms and feet. Instead, she was stretched motionlessly upon the altar, her long, dark hair splayed around her like rays from a black sun. Dried blood crusted her face like rivers of scarlet tears. Her skin was ashy, her eyes closed as if she couldn't bear to see some horror, and her mouth open in a silent scream of terror. Her tunic—a Rider's one—was torn, displaying flesh marred by livid whip marks and a knife lodged in her chest.

The girl wasn't Aisha, Zahir told himself, even though he couldn't imagine who else she could be, and she wasn't dead—just sleeping in the grip of a nasty nightmare. He focused on deflecting Haashim's volley of hits with his sword as Khalila, shaking from head to foot because she hadn't understood that the sleeping girl on the altar wasn't Aisha, walked over the fallen men to stand before the altar.

Strike. Block. Hit. Parry. Broken time. Sweaty-body-to-sweaty body. Backflip. Feint. Recover. The fight between Zahir and Haashim raged on as Khalila rested her cheek against the girl's bloody one and pulled, as gently as possible, the dagger from the girl's chest. She must have felt no whisper of breath and no heartbeat from the girl spread out upon the stones, for she cried out, her voice as broken as a clock that could only be right twice a day, "No, Aisha!"

Somehow Khalila's broken tone managed to shatter his refusal to accept that the girl on the altar was Aisha, who, only hours ago, had been a living, breathing, fighting, laughing, and joking person. Now she was dead, breathless, motionless, and silent as a grave. She had always been by his side—ever ready to offer him mockery or encouragement—and now she was gone.

Gone. The word tolled like a tuneless bell inside his head. For the rest of his life, he would turn around to grin at her or to say something to her, only to find emptiness next to him and inside him. Gone. He would never go riding into the sunrise with her, the wind smacking against both their faces. Gone. A million static points frozen in time that he couldn't return to. Never again would he lay beside her on the hot sand, as they dipped both their toes into the blessedly cold oasis. Gone. It was funny how his childhood had felt so long when he had experienced it, but when he reflected upon it, it seemed entirely too short. Gone. Never again would he play with her in the snow. Gone. Never again would he boil with anger as she flirted with Keir.

Gone. A thousand moments with her blurred in his mind, and only one memory remained clear in his head. She was young and scared of the dark, so he had slipped across the tent to squeeze beside her on her sleeping mat. She was leaning her head against his shoulder, and her hair was so close to his lips that he could have tasted it if he had only opened his mouth. Her fingers, as light with the desire to sleep as her eyelids were heavy, wrapped around his wrist, and her murmur, "Stay with me until I fall asleep. It's lonely in the dark without you."

Those words echoed inside his skull now. He hadn't stayed with her. He had let her eyes shut for the last time without being there to hold her hand if she got scared of the dark. He had allowed her to go into the dark alone. Fury blinded him, and he lurched forward, his sword slashing toward Haashim's neck, as he imagined slicing off that horrible, sneering head.

At his feet, the invisible coils around the men tightened, rising up their legs to their chests and then to their throats, asphyxiating them like some exotic serpent from the Copper Isles. He heard curses, shouts, pleas for mercy, gasps, and then a silence that told him the men were all dead. This knowledge pleased him, and triumph, as heady as if he had slain the men himself, pounded in his veins as he watched Khalila, drained from all the magical energy she had pulled from herself, collapse onto the altar beside her best friend.

He would slay Haashim the way Khalila had killed the men, but he would be more ruthless than her. He would make suffocation seem like an afternoon tea. He would make Haashim remember the death Aisha had suffered. He would make every second of Haashim's agony last an eon. He would make Haashim beg for mercy, and then he would show none. He would tear Haashim apart piece by bloody piece, so that the man would know exactly how it felt to lose the most precious parts of himself…

The ferocity of Zahir's attacks was increasing. His blade was flashing from one offensive position to the next like lightning in a summer thunderstorm, and Haashim's defenses were slipping, the parries slower and sloppier with every passing second. He was pushing Haashim over the corpses, planning to trap him against a wall, so he could really torture Haashim before killing him, when the man tripped, the sword falling out of his hands.

"Pick up your sword, vermin," snapped Zahir, kicking Haashim in the face so that blood poured out of his nose. He wasn't ready for the fight to be over, and he certainly wasn't prepared to offer Haashim a quick, relatively painless death by chopping of the man's head or piercing his heart. Haashim hadn't shed nearly enough blood yet. He hadn't experienced nearly enough of the suffering Zahir had endured upon realizing Aisha was dead. "Fight me!"

"I don't want to fight any more." Haashim pressed himself against the body he had tripped over. It was as though he was seeking some sort of warmth or consolation, but he would find cold comfort from a corpse.

"I don't care what you want, villain," Zahir snarled, stomping on Haashim's sword hand and smirking when he heard the decisive cracks that indicated broken fingers. "Pick up your weapon before I break anything else."

"Kill me." A wild glow burned through the shadows that normally swallowed Haashim's eyes. "Kill me, and kill yourself. If you don't, you'll become me."

"Liar," growled Zahir, kicking Haashim in the stomach.

"The Nameless Ones have entered you the way they entered me." Haashim closed his eyes. "They left me and moved into you as soon as you realized your sister was dead. Can't you feel your ever-growing bloodlust?"

"I feel nothing of the sort," Zahir hissed, but that was a lie. He could feel the lava blazing through his veins where blood had once flowed. He could feel his heart screaming at him not to kill a weaponless man, and he could feel his mind and his body refusing to listen to his heart. He could feel his hand raise, intending to begin the fun by slicing off first Haashim's right and then his left hand, when, suddenly, he found himself trapped in a darkness more overpowering than any he had encountered before.

_This darkness swallowed even the memory of light, and he felt cold. Unbelievably, impossibly cold. In northern winters, he had been cold before, but those colds had only been chilling, numbing, and weakening. This cold, though, froze him without the solace of numbness. Tiny dagger-edge crystals of ice so cold they burned his blood grew inward through his skin at every pore, becoming freezing hairlines that crept along his nerves. _

_With the cold, came the silence. A silence deeper than a human being could truly experience: not just the absence of external sounds, but the absence of all concept of sound. No whisper of breath. No hush of blood coursing through the arteries. No faintest beat of his heart. Not even the vaguest sensation of vibration, pressure, or friction upon his skin. _

_The cold and silence penetrated into his thoughts. These thoughts were glacially slow, actionless, featureless hours of blank staring into empty space, hours becoming years that stretched into numberless millennia, as one by one the stars flickered out. He could do nothing, for there was nothing to do, except watch the stars die, and see nothingness replace them. Soon it would only be him, floating, empty of everything, without thought, and without sensation, forever. _

_He tried to reach out to the stars, but each one he touched gave back no hope, no purpose, no dream of escape, but instead drew these out of his frozen heart, swallowing them whole, and fed them to the dark, which allowed no trace that they had ever existed. _

_Then his head seemed to split down the middle, and a small crack appeared in his mind. Through that crack, tiny beyond tiny, shone the very faintest conceivable glimmer of light. He concentrated on the crack and the light, and through that tiny crack and its glimmer of light, he found himself again. _

_He was moving closer to the light. It was getting ever bigger, ever brighter, and ever warmer. He was passing through a curtain of white, pure, radiant energy, and he was sinking gently onto a meadow of soft, verdant grass that had suddenly materialized and yet felt like it had existed, with him in it, for centuries. _

_A sugary scent flooded his nostrils, and looking around, he spotted pink wildflowers as delicate as a modest maiden's blush dappling the grass. Beautiful wildflowers of the kind so common in the north. Wonderful wildflowers that were planted by the wind and didn't care where they grew. The sound of water trickling over rocks made him turn his head to see a babbling brook surrounded by thickets of blackberries so thick and lustrous they had to contain a universe of flavor. _

_He heard faint rustlings that reminded him of squirrels scurrying across a forest floor in search of nuts. When he looked away from the stream to discover the source of the sound, he saw Trevor and his father, more tranquil and more handsome than either had ever been in life, resting in the grass on either side of him. _

"_Where I am?" he asked, but he wasn't particularly concerned with the answer. As long as he was able to stay here forever, he didn't care. After all he had endured, he deserved to relax eternally in a meadow with his father and Trevor. _

"_Geography was never my favorite subject, so I've no notion." Trevor chuckled, sounding as though his body was filled with more joy and more amusement than it could possibly contain. "You chose for us to come here. Don't you know why you picked it?" _

"_During our first year, when Joren and I were searching for food during the end of the year camping exercise, we came across a meadow that looked like this," Zahir said, remembering even as he answered. "We took of our shoes and cooled our feet in the brook until the minnows began nibbling at our toes. Then we took our feet out of the water and started tossing pebbles into the stream. The rocks shimmered like fish when we bounced them across the water, and when they finally fell beneath the surface, they left the most beautiful ripples behind them. We both ate a handful of blackberries—just a handful. We didn't want to make ourselves sick on the only good food we had eaten for days, and we didn't want to take away too much of the meadow's beauty. We wanted it to be unspoiled for the next people who stumbled upon it. I remember thinking those blackberries were the sweetest fruit that I had ever tasted, and I remember not caring if I talked and laughed with my mouth dribbling with juice. I remember thinking that if I could just stretch that moment out into eternity, I would always be at the peak of happiness." Then, looking around him again, he added, "I can't be in that meadow now, though, so where am I really?" _

"_In a higher plane," Trevor replied in a gentle voice that suggested Zahir was refusing to see what was staring him in the face. _

"_Am I dead?" Once again, Zahir found that he didn't much care about the answer. After spending eternity at the end of the universe, mere death—at least his- didn't mean much to him at all. _

"_The Nameless Ones didn't want to kill you," his father told him bluntly. "They wanted to steal your soul. If they could take over your soul and make you consume your own flesh, they would have been restored to their bodies. They would no longer have been trapped inside the stones of the temple. If your special rock hadn't been in your pocket, we never would have been able to give you the light to follow out of the Nameless Ones' darkness." _

"_I still don't understand how I can be here, Walidi," muttered Zahir, unconsciously addressing his father in the ancient language of his people and stroking the wild magic stone the king had given him what seemed like a millennia ago. If he ever returned to the real world, he would have to remember to thank his knightmaster for the stone, which had turned out to be useful in a manner he could not possibly have imagined._

"_Nothing is ever really lost, ibni," responded his father, using the Bazhir word for son. "The heat and the light lost on one plane must appear in another plane. The Nameless Ones create black holes to suck up the heat and the light of souls on the earthly plane, so naturally the light and the heat of the souls devoured by the black holes are released in a heavenly plane. The opposite of a black hole is a white fountain of pure light and energy. Your spirit became a white fountain."_

"_And what about Aisha?" Wondering how he could have taken so long to ask about her fate, Zahir swallowed. "Did her spirit become a white fountain?" _

"_As much as anyone's does when they die." This time it was Trevor who answered. "You sister is being purified before she can enter paradise." _

"_Purified?" stuttered Zahir, feeling very far from at peace in the meadow now. "What would she need to be purified for?"_

"_So she can be perfect enough to enter paradise." Trevor tilted his head to sniff a wildflower. "Paradise wouldn't be paradise if any imperfection was allowed within it, would it?" _

"_How should I know?" snarled Zahir, yanking up clumps of grass. "I didn't ever believe in any sort of afterlife—especially not a paradise—before now." _

"_Being purified doesn't hurt any more than having a skinned knee cleaned." Gently, as if he could sense Zahir's true fear, Trevor rested a stilling hand on top of Zahir's. "It stings a little and the shame of knowing you were foolish enough to beat yourself up so much is the worst part, but it is also an amazingly cleansing and healing experience." _

"_You needed to be purified?" Zahir's eyes widened. "If you had to be purified, what hope do I have of ever being clean enough for paradise?" _

"_More hope than you think." Trevor grinned at him. "I wasn't quite as good a person as you flatter me by thinking I was. I lied to you, making it seem like my brothers were still alive when they had already gone onto paradise—" _

"_I know that," Zahir cut in impatiently. "You were still morning the loss of them. What you did wasn't a crime." _

"_It was a violation of your trust." Trevor shook his head. "I apologize for it." _

"_It was _you_," burst out Zahir. "Now that you're perfect, you aren't you." _

"_Nonsense." Trevor nudged his shoulder jovially. "I'm just the best me that I can be, just like I was trying to become all my life. It only took until the afterlife for me to become all I could be. Anyway, the time that your father and I have with you here is running out. You have to decide whether you want to go onto the afterlife or if you want to return to life to fight the Nameless Ones." _

"_You must decide, ibni, if you will leave the Bazhir in darkness or if you will carry the light you have discovered here back to them," his father put in, locking eyes with Zahir. _

"_Baba, I don't know how to do that." The childhood affectionate term for father slipping out before he could stop it, Zahir hung his head, his tongue bitter with failure. "You're asking too much of me." _

"_I'm not asking too much of you," countered Alhaz, lifting his son's chin. "Your mother and I were going to name you after my father, but the moment I looked into your eyes, I knew that I had to name you Zahir, because your eyes burned so brightly like the first Voice's must have when he was born. You were born to be a light in the world, and I made the mistake of not telling you that often enough when I was raising you. I wanted to be a better father to you than my own was to me, but he was the only example that I had, and I ended up abusing you like he did me." _

"_It doesn't matter." Swallowing hard, Zahir found that it didn't. "We had some special moments together, and we'll have eternity to get our relationship right, won't we?" _

"_Yes, we'll have eternity," agreed Zahir's father quietly. _

"_But not starting now," Zahir added, his jaw setting. If there was any chance at all that Cait—whom he hadn't thought about in his grief and fury over Aisha's death—was still alive and not dead like his sister, he would have to do his best to save her. Certainly, he couldn't leave her alone to face the Ysandir. "Now I have to go back." _

"_You don't go back alone." His father rested a palm on his forehead in a blessing. "Do not be afraid. I'll be beside you and within you always." _

"_As will the gods," put in Trevor, smiling. "When you truly give yourselves to the gods, Zahir, all you do will express the truth of who you are and who they are. Then, through you, grace will flow, guiding your hand, so that the greatest good might emerge from your smallest gesture."_

_Before Zahir could reply to any of this, he felt himself being lifted out of the meadow, falling back through the sliver of light, dropping through the darkness that had to be blacker even than empty space, and landing with a jolt back in the real world. _

When he returned to the real world, Zahir saw that Haashim was curled up in a ball, cradling his broken fingers and smearing the blood from his battered nose across his sleeves. Looking down at the trembling sphere of flesh and blood, Zahir couldn't believe that this quivering, shrunken man was the person the entire desert—including him—had been so afraid of. In this state, Haashim just looked like the boy who had been sickened by a sister's stoning and who had too terrified to seek comfort after cutting his finger on the thorn of cactus flower.

Forcing his gaze away from the shaking ball that was Haashim, Zahir glanced around the room, searching for any sign of Cait. When he didn't discover any indication of where she was, he gulped and focused his attention on Haashim, who would have to have information about Cait's whereabouts, again.

Lowering his weapon, but not sheathing it, Zahir knelt beside Haashim, unsure of how to approach an enemy who might not be his foe anymore.

"Stay back!" Haashim's trembling increased. "I will rip your head from your shoulders. I will feast upon your guts."

"It's all right." Zahir kept his voice steady, as if he didn't fear what a crazy, enraged Haashim might do. "This is a frightening place. Things have been done to you here that should never have been done to anyone."

"It's so dead." Haashim's voice broke, and all his rage and terror seemed to have fled, as he sagged against Zahir. "Nothing but stone and corpses. My friends dead. My love dead, and I choked her. Everyone and everything dead. Dead without. Dead within. Dead forever."

"Not everyone and everything." Zahir reached out and clasped Nasira's wrist, feeling the gentle shudder of her pulse against his skin. "Nasira is still alive. You're alive. I'm alive."

"That means nothing." Bleakly, Haashim shook his head. "We mean nothing."

"We mean everything," Zahir insisted.

"Destroy me." Haashim's head rose so he could fix his hollow gaze upon Zahir. "I mean nothing."

"I'm not destroying you when there's been too much destroying already." Zahir clapped Haashim lightly on the back. "You don't need to be killed. You need to be rescued."

"What do you want from me?" Haashim asked, his tone as flat as his eyes.

"I want you to take my hand." As he established as much, Zahir extended his palm to Haashim, and, after a long moment, Haashim's shaking hand slipped into his.

Taking a deep breath, Zahir got to his feet, supporting Haashim against his shoulders. As they rose, he asked, "Where's Cait?"

"Downstairs," Haashim mumbled. "The Nameless Ones told me to lock her in the secret chamber where virgins were once kept before they were sacrificed to the Nameless Ones."


	65. Chapter 65

Author's Note: I hope that all my American readers out there had a happy Thanksgiving and survived Black Friday with only flesh wounds. Welcome to the holiday season, everyone!

Light in the Darkness

Like a team in a many-legged race, Zahir and Haashim stumbled over the corpses Khalila had created until they reached a door hidden in a niche between two pillars. Runes Zahir could never hope to translate were etched into the golden knob and the gilded doorframe.

Anxious to rescue Cait, because a nasty voice in his brain was hissing that he was running out of time to save her if he hadn't already run out of time, Zahir stretched out his hand to open the door, but, to his surprise and irritation, Haashim yanked his arm back.

"If an unworthy touches that handle, the unworthy's palm will be burned so severely that no shaman would ever be able to restore a sense of touch to the roasted skin," Haashim said flatly before Zahir could punch him with his free hand.

"What do I have to do to be worthy?" demanded Zahir, wondering if he could even trust Haashim to provide accurate information, jerking his arm out of the man's grasp.

"Smear the rune on the knob with your own life's blood, which you must take from yourself by force." Shutting his eyes as if he had finally realized the disgusting, horrifying brutality that pervaded every action in this temple to evil, Haashim went on softly, "You must use your knife to cut the life line on your palm. You can't spare even a pinprick of the flesh on life line of your palm unless you want your entire palm to be roasted."

"It might be less painful if the palm was cooked like a goose before carving," grunted Zahir, his stomach churning. The Nameless Ones' perversity would never cease to shock and revolt him. Not only would they demand a tribute of blood that would physically weaken any who sought to enter further into their temple, but they would also require that the blood flow from the life line of the palm, so that, symbolically, it would be the life's blood of the seeker. That meant, to save Cait, Zahir would have to cut his life, at least symbolically, in half with his own dagger.

Reminding himself that he had always promised that he would die for Cait if he had to and that he wouldn't be able to meet his own eyes in the wash basin water if he abandoned her to a terrible fate when he had to keep his word, he stretched out his trembling palm again. Feeling like a traitor preparing for beheading, he braced his skin for the cold metal of his knife tickling his flesh before cleaving it. Then his whole hand would burn with agony and the warmth of blood trickling across his palm and streaming down his fingers would replace the chill of the blade. He filled his lungs with the air he would need not to faint while injuring himself and wished that he could close his eyes, but he couldn't be sure that he would slice along the life line if he couldn't see what he was doing.

As he gritted his teeth, telling himself that if he could shed others' blood he should not freeze up when he was required to spill his own blood, Zahir pressed his dagger against his palm. He felt it dig into his callused skin, but before a splotch of blood could land on it, Haashim shouted, "Don't!"

Zahir was so astonished that he might have driven the knife all the way through his hand. Thinking that he would chop off Haahim's arm if the man had lied to him, he growled, "What? I don't have time for my squeamishness, nonetheless yours."

"I've already given my life's blood to pass through this door." Haashim thrust his palm under Zahir's nose, showing a life line crusted with rust-colored blood with gleaming white scar tissue streaked below the layer of blood. "You have yet to give any of your blood to the Nameless Ones. Why should you pay the same price as I did?"

Before Zahir could insist that he would pay the price if it prevented Cait from dying like Aisha, Haashim snatched the dagger out of his hand. Zahir's hand drifted toward his sword hilt, prepared to draw the weapon if the man threatened him, but, instead, Haashim cut through his already torn flesh, so that a fresh coat of blood pooled into the old layer on his palm.

Bile, swiftly swallowed, burned up Zahir's throat like a wildfire as he watched Haashim press the ripped, bleeding skin against the knob. For a moment, nothing happened except that droplets of crimson stained the handle. Then, the blood soaked into the knob, which suddenly turned of its own volition. A second later, the door swung open with a creak of ancient hinges, revealing a flight of black stone steps that, as far as Zahir could see, led down into nothing but empty darkness.

Stepping down onto the first stair, he discovered that no sand, dust, dirt, or cobwebs clung to the step, the walls, or the ceiling. He did notice, though, that the ceiling was low and the walls were spaced closely together, doubtlessly to inspire claustrophobia and the sensation of being trapped in all humans who dared to set foot in this part of the temple.

With every step, Zahir found himself walking deeper into a blackness unrelieved by even the hope of light from a torch or through a window and into a cold that raised ever more gooseflesh upon his skin. The temperature had to be dropping at least ten degrees with every stair, he thought, his teeth chattering.

"Is this where we'll die, Zahir ibn Alhaz?" Haashim's voice echoed through the blackness and the cold, sounding as hollow but not as cold as the darkness itself.

"I don't know." Zahir shook his head even though he knew that Haashim couldn't spot the gesture unless a shooting star suddenly soared through the catacomb. Then, in the interest of honesty, he added, "Probably."

"This is a bad place to die." Haashim's tone was as dispassionate as if he were discussing rain patterns in the Copper Isles that could indirectly impact a minor business transaction.

"Yes." That was all Zahir could think to say, but maybe that was all he needed to say.

"Granted a choice, I would not die beside a boy reared in the north," Haashim went on flatly.

"I'm sorry." Zahir, in commemoration of the fact that Haashim had shed his own life's blood in order to allow them into this passageway, did not point out that, given the choice, he would never have picked to die beside Haahim.

"I know a northern Voice, and that knowing is not a pleasure, because, however much he pretends to respect our customs, he wants to destroy our traditions, so that the Bazhir are nothing but dark-faced northerners. He hopes that our daughters will cast off their veils and our sons will serve in his armies although our ancestors died to protect this desert and its people from the armies of his forefathers." Haashim had spat out the words like a snake spewing venom, but his manner changed as he continued in a milder fashion, "I fought for power in this desert since I knew you, as a northern boy, would be the next Voice, and that, as a result, immorality would continue to grow here. I couldn't permit that to happen—not when that immorality had already caused my wife to betray me with my best friend and my best friend to betray me with my wife. I thought the Nameless Ones were the only ones who could give me the power to restore justice and order to my world, but I was wrong to think that way. You are neither a boy nor a northerner. You are a Bazhir man, and I am happy to have fought with and against you. Now I can rejoice in the knowledge that you are more than the current Voice."

"Thanks," Zahir grunted, his cheeks flaming but not enough to brighten the oppressive black. "But I barely know anything."

"So you believe." Haashim's eyes pierced through the dark to lock on Zahir's. "I say to you, though, that you are going to be the greatest Voice since the first."

"What makes you say that?" Zahir snorted, wondering if he or Haashim had banged his head against the low ceiling.

"Unlike so many Voices, you are not afraid or the dark, and you don't deny its existence inside and outside of you," answered Haashim as though it were as obvious as the fact that stew was thicker than water.

Not afraid of the dark. The words reverberated, tolling funeral bells in a northern cathedral, inside Zahir's skull. Abruptly, he realized that if he hoped to save Cait, he would have to send his mind fully into the shadow world he had so recently escaped, into the internal void that swallowed even the memory of light. He would not only have to stare into the abyss but launch into it headfirst. He would have to drown himself in the void. He would have to let the dark close over his face, seeping into his eyes and ears, trickling down his throat, and entombing him in the empty, meaningless end of all things.

He had spent eons in the dark, and he knew its awful power, but, if his nerve failed him now, he would be leaving Cait in that darkness. Alone. Forever. The dark would consume her as if she had never existed. What chance would she have to escape if he didn't save her? How would she find the light if he couldn't find a way to bring it to her?

Because that was what the Voice does, he understood suddenly. That was what the Voice was for. The Voice was the one who brought and carried the light. The Voice was nothing more than a torch-bearer. And the torch he carried would faith, because that was all he had and all he would ever have to defeat the darkness. Once he hadn't known what faith was, but now, because of Trevor and his father, he could define it. Faith was a memory of a time when all was perfect in the world, before there was fear, judgment, and death. It was a memory of a time before birth, a beacon to guide people back from the end to the beginning, to the memory of where they came from. It was a memory of a promise made before the earth was formed, before the stars glittered in the primordial sea. A promise that said they would remember what they had learned in this life, so that, in the afterlife, they could be the same yet different—wiser, more filled with compassion for others and for themselves. Faith was love as well as the memory and promise of it.

Grabbing onto the rock that was warm in his pocket, he gathered his courage and all the love drumming through his beating heart, because if he was going to dive into the absolute negation of light, he had better bring along some of his own. Then, he allowed his consciousness to touch the black hole in his mind, letting himself fall into the darkness.

_His senses were useless here in the dark. Here, there was no sight, no sound, no touch, and no awareness of his body, but he was a star, and he could make the light that shone from him bright. As the thought occurred to him, he felt heat circulating through his veins again, and stars flared in his heat. _

_Looking upon them, he saw that every star, however dim, instantly brightened as his light fed its own. Attracted by his energy, they drew nearer to him, growing ever brighter as they approached him. They fell into orbit around him, becoming a system of infinite complexity wheeling through the blackness in a joyous dance. Here they were in the dark, and, like Hassan had said earlier, it was not empty. It was not meaningless. Not with all of them here. It was beautiful. _

_One star like none of the others still swung through an orbit lower than his. This one did not feed upon his light but shone with its own, as brilliant and as powerful as his. Then, as he watched in horror, it fell into a tightening gyre down a black hole's gravity well. As the star fell, the void stripped a huge jet of energy and light from it in a fountain ripped from its heart and sucked forever into the dark. He knew this star was Cait, so he brought his light to bear upon it. _

Hang on_, he tried to send to her. _Don't give into the dark. I'm coming for you. Hang on.

_He felt no response, only overwhelming sadness and crushing despair and that empty, lost meaninglessness of the end of the universe. He tried to make his beam of light a strength that might save her, because he remembered all too well that void, the endless lack that was deeper than darkness. _

_If only there was some way he could show her all the light she would ever need shone from herself. They were the light in the universe. The gods' light didn't just shine upon them—it shone through them. He saw that now, and it made sense to him at last. All of them were stars. Every star, every life, was a thing of beauty forged by the gods. _

_And she couldn't see that. She couldn't see them. She couldn't even look their way, not anymore. Her star was bound to the black hole of the Ysandir, and the black hole would not allow her to turn her face away. He couldn't even get her attention, and the black hole was aware of him now. The abyss he stared into was now staring into him. He felt its emptiness that nothing could fill, and its bleak hunger that could never be satisfied. In his mind, the chasm swelled toward him like jaws opening to swallow the world, capturing every scrap of light, hope, and love. _

_He was in the minds of the Nameless Ones now, and the blasted girl they had ordered their minion, Haashim, to chain to the stone bed virgins had always slept upon before being sacrificed to them was refusing to break. They had urged Haashim's men thrash, kick, and spit upon her. The skin around her shut eyes was purple, dried blood enhanced the auburn streaks in her hair, blood seeped from her nose which seemed broken, her clothes were torn, her back was a patchwork of whip marks, and her limbs were maps of bruises. _

_They had themselves, with their magic, taken away her sight, cut her hearing, and erased her senses of smell, taste, and touch. They had made it so that she wasn't aware of her body at all. She wasn't fighting them, they were sure of that, because she didn't know how. She just wouldn't surrender. She had some inner spark that sustained her against the dark. They couldn't fathom what this spark might be. Perhaps some primitive, girlish emotional attachment, they supposed. _

_Her brain, to them, was not weak and quivering, but hard and shining with a brilliant white light that stabbed them like a knife, causing them to reel back in astonishment. They made fists of whole galaxies and brought these ruined galaxies together to crush this one tiny star, but when their cataclysm faded into the oblivion of darkness, the little star shone on. _

"_What is wrong with you?" they shouted at the star in frustration. "Why won't you die?" _

"_I can tell you that." Zahir's voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and, somehow, he knew that the Ysandir could hear him as well as he could them. "You have one chance to do this the easy way." _

"_The easy way would be for us to swap," snapped the female Nameless One. "Give yourself fully to us, and we'll let your slut go." _

_Zahir felt the Nameless Ones opening themselves wholly to the dark, cracking the very gates of their minds, expanding the sphere of their powers. They surrounded Zahir's star, dragging it down the black hole that they had created. Daggers of ice filled his veins, a blindfold he could never see through or remove covered his eyes, and the drums had been taken from his ears. He was blind and deaf. He could feel nothing but freezing pain that lacked the comfort of numbness, and he wanted to scream, but his tongue had been carved out by the darkness. He was suffering more than he could ever have imagined a being could, and all this agony was for Cait, whom he would always love. _

_He felt like he was dying, and the Nameless Ones doubtlessly thought he was snuffing out like a candle in a sandstorm, but he was still alive. Warmth was starting to thaw the ice in his veins, and light was filtering through the blindfolds around his eyes. Music and laughter was filling his ears. He had become a white fountain, and he could enter the minds of the Nameless Ones without fear of any damage they could inflict upon him. _

_Reaching out to touch their minds, he saw that they thought they would preside over a universe of infinite suffering whose only end would be oblivion, meaningless as life itself was to them. They thought they would be the final act in the saga of the universe. He could feel them sending their will into the black hole they created and finding, where there should have been dark beyond darkness, only light. White light, where Zahir had become a brilliant, blinding young star. _

_He felt the creeping dread poisoning their satisfaction. He felt them ask themselves if he had been so easily vanquished because he had intended to be. He felt them wonder if his light had not been destroyed by falling into the black hole. He felt them pondering whether his light had simply passed through. _

"_That's where those who embrace the dark always stumble," he told them dryly, feeling Trevor and his father beside him, ready to propel him back through the black hole when his work as a white fountain was complete. "What's the opposite of a black hole? Well, light and energy falling into a black hole passes into another plane, and light and energy falling through black holes in another plane can burst into our, flowing forth in pure, transcendent energy and light, because nothing is ever really lost. The opposite of a black hole is simply a white fountain." _

_Zahir let his light stretch further into the Nameless Ones' minds, blasting away even their memory of darkness. He felt them recoil convulsively, retreating into the walls of their temple to tempt another generation, like a worm cringing away from a hot rock. More than light stemmed from him now, and the Nameless Ones knew it. They knew it was _the _light—the power to drive off the dark- that streamed from him, and they withered before it, trapped once again in the walls of their temple. _

_The Ysandir, for now, had been defeated. Trevor and his father were pushing him back through the black hole. He was becoming a white fountain again…_

He landed, standing as straight as a poker, back on the steps in the catacomb. Haashim was tugging on his arm, demanding, "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right." Breathing heavily, Zahir allowed himself to be escorted down the stairwell like a drunkard hobbling home leaning on a relatively sober friend. "I just need a minute to catch my breath. Or a week. Or two."

"I know what you mean." He felt Haashim tremble against him as they reached the bottom step. "Like you, I can handle things going wrong in the world. I'm used to it, and I can do something about it. It was when things went wrong inside—" Here, Haashim paused to jab a finger at his temple—"that I had real issues."

They were facing door with elaborate depictions of gory sacrifices etched in gold into the wood. Anxious to reach Cait so she would not have to regain consciousness alone, Zahir asked brusquely, "How do we get in here?"

"This chamber was used to store the virgins before their ritual slaughter in the temple above us." Haashim's lips twisted into a smile reminiscent of the one he wore when threatening Zahir's family. "Only the girls and the people willing to sacrifice them to the Nameless Ones were able to enter here. It was the decision of the mothers to lose forever the hands that had helped them cook and clean, the choice of the fathers to kill the hope their daughters would marry well, and the decision of the young men who were in love with the young virgins to have an innocent whom they loved killed that allowed the people to come through this door. To open this door, you must kill the person you love most in the world. The Nameless Ones see that as the ultimate test of your devotion to them and the power they can provide."

"Why is it the ultimate test?" Zahir asked, lips shaking with revulsion, before it occurred to him that he probably did not want any more proof of how twisted the Ysandir were.

"Because taking the life of one you love is always harder even than taking your own." Haashim stared at the horrible carvings on the door as if they contained all the meaning in the world. "That is what makes it the ultimate test of selflessness—whether you're ready to face unending emotional pain, true agony, to gain the power to create peace and order for hundreds of strangers. That is the sacrifice. To be vilified by others, by people you know and care for, and for your personal sacrifice to be totally unknown to those you save. To do your duty as a Bazhir man. It's easy to be a clean-cut hero slaying monsters, but what if you have to ally with those monsters to achieve anything? There's always a bit of vanity involved in being the traditional killing beasts hero, but there is no room for pride in being despised. True, selfless courage can only take place in darkness, unseen."

"You seemed to take a great deal of pride in being despised earlier," retorted Zahir, his hackles rising. "You don't save innocent people by killing them, and you don't rid the world of monsters by becoming one. True courage only happens in the dark, yes, but it's always a light in the dark. Trust me. That's how I trapped the Ysandir in the walls again."

"Maybe you want to get us through this door then, dear hero." Haashim shot him a frigid glance. "After all, you're the one who wants to reach your girl."

"My little sister has already been killed by you," snapped Zahir, "and the girl I love is trapped behind that door."

"Then obviously you love another girl more than you love her. Never mind, though, I shall get us through this door, because I have already killed the two people I loved most in the world." Haashim bent forward and hissed at the door handle, "I have strengthened myself through sacrifice. I have ruined those who deny justice. I have immortalized my love."

The handle turned on its own accord, and, with a creak of ancient hinges, the door swung open revealing a battered, bleeding Cait shackled to a parody of a marriage bed chiseled from cold, black stone. Racing forward to kneel by her side, Zahir clutched her wrist and was relieved to feel a pulse. The desire to see her face without her own blood caking it surged through him, and he removed his canteen from his belt. Then, moistening the cleanest corner of his shirt, he began to wipe the gore from her cheeks.

The damp cloth brushing against her skin caused her to stir and open her eyes. "Zahir?"

"I'm here," he said, squeezing her fingers with the hand that wasn't cleaning her face. "I'm right here, Cait."

"So dark," she whispered.

"Yes," Zahir murmured, starting to hack at the chains binding her to the bed. "It will get brighter, though. I promise."

"Good." Cait remained motionless as he continued to attack the shackles. Tears glistened like small crystals at the ridges of her eyelids as she muttered, "Where I was, it was so dark that for so long I couldn't remember who I was. I couldn't remember anything except for you. It was like you were with me. You were all I had left, and I didn't need anything or anyone else."

"I'm with you now." Finally, Zahir freed her hands and began the struggle to liberate her feet. "We're together, and we always will be."

Cait eyed him with a quiet sorrow and longing that suggested she knew somehow that this wouldn't be the case. Then, fumbling around in his pockets without permission, she asked, "Is there anything to eat?"

"Field rations, but they're probably stale," Zahir grunted, cutting away at the chains.

"I don't care." Cait found the rations and pulled them out of his pocket.

"Are you kidding?" Zahir gasped, freeing her legs from the shackles, returning his sword to its sheath, and sagging against the wall to catch his breath. When he leaned back, the weight of this place where the life, the beauty, and the innocence had been pulled out of the young virgins by the Nameless Ones fell over him like a stifling wool blanket, and, against his will, his eyes drifted shut, as blackness finally overtook him.


	66. Chapter 66

Heroes and Happy Endings

_In his dream, Zahir was finally free. On Sufia's back, he was racing across the desert toward a rising sun that was painting the sky in strips of crimson, magenta, violet, and tangerine. The sand crunching beneath his mare's hooves was the soft golden of honey melted into warm tea. Beside him, Aisha was running her horse. _

_They were smiling at each other, and no sand was sticking to their teeth. The wind whipped through their hair and smacked against their faces, making their adrenaline spike, but no sand flew into their eyes. The sun heated their skin, but did not burn their flesh or cause them to sweat. _

_Somehow, Zahir knew that they had traveled together for miles, even though their mounts showed no sign of strain. They could run into the wind and the sunrise together forever just as they had always longed to do. For once, their sense of liberty wouldn't be choked by the understanding that their freedom was doomed to end, and, as such, did not truly exist. _

_Perhaps it was the arrogance of this half-formed dream thought that prompted the setting of his dream to change from one that freed his soul to one that shackled his spirit. It was a deep, black night lit only by the yellow pinpricks of stars overhead, and the cackle of orange and red campfire flames._

_He was dancing around the fire, twisting and bowing in a complex dance that he had never been taught but somehow had always known—a dance that seemed to be a pure expression of all the hope and despair in his soul. He wasn't dancing alone, though. _

_A slender figure, wearing a mauve dress and a veil adorned with roses, was twirling and curtsying in rhythm with his every movement. Their hands came together and then separated in tune to the music only their spirits could hear or sing. When the bare skin of their palms whispered together, Zahir realized that the girl's flesh was as tender as rose petals, and when he gazed into her eyes—Khalila's eyes—he saw the rose's thorns. She could see everything that made him strong and all that made him vulnerable. She could recognize the best and worst in him. She had been his sister's best friend, but, in some strange way, she had always been his and he had always been hers. _

_Cait, in the way of dreams, had materialized on the scene. Seeing Zahir and Khalila dancing, she screamed, "I thought you loved me, Zahir!" _

_Zahir didn't know how to respond to that. He had thought that he had loved her, too. He had thought that his lips against his and her skin touching his would be all he ever needed to turn his sorrow into joy, but his soul stirred in response to Khalila, even if only his dream self knew it…_

_Perhaps Cait could read his mind, because she laughed bitterly. "Never mind. I understand. Whatever boys say, it's just cruel sport to quicken a girl's blood and open her legs. All their praises are just mouthfuls of toxic air." _

_Zahir opened his mouth to protest that this contained as much truth as any vicious stereotype about the male gender when he found himself falling through the sand, his heart pounding as if it were trying to shatter his ribcage. _

A moment later, he woke up, panting and sweating, in a heap of blankets on a soft sleeping mat. Desperate to figure out where he was and how he had gotten there, he pushed himself upright on his elbows, feeling his body screaming a protest with every inch.

"Be still!" snapped his mother's voice, which at least answered the question of where he was. He must be in Hassan's tent, though how he had arrived there was still something of a mystery. "We don't want you knocking yourself out again by moving too quickly." There was the sound of a cloth being dropped into a basin of water, and Zahir noticed there was a cool dampness on his forehead. Jaseena must have been soaking his forehead with cold water. "The king says he felt your life force burn out and then return twice whatever that means, and he had to send soldiers into Black City in order to find you and your companions. Why you ever had to go there in the first place is beyond my comprehension. I swear I could live to twice the age I am now and still not understand a quarter of the mad things my idiotic children do."

The overwhelming, cloying scent of myrrh mingling with funerary herbs assaulted his nose, making him wonder how he had not absorbed the smell earlier. His eyes fell on a slender, human figure wrapped in white linen from head to toe. Bile scorched a path up his throat, and he pressed the blazing vomit back down his tongue, as everything came rushing back to him with all the destructive might of a flash of lightning dashing across a summer sky to strike an ancient birch.

The sight of the body wrapped in funeral cloths caused a hundred memories to ram into his chest with enough force to knock over a line of cavalry. He remembered Aisha chained to a cold altar soaked with her blood. He remembered the bruises and raw cuts that covered her flesh. He remembered the dark purple shadows under her eyes and her torn garments. He remembered how she had not struggled against the manacles that bound her to the altar. He remembered how dried blood had streaked her cheeks like scarlet rivers. He remembered how ashy her skin had been and how her eyes had been closed as if she couldn't bear to see one final horror. He remembered how her mouth had been open in a silent scream of terror that he had been sure would ring inside his ears forever. He remembered the knife in Aisha's chest and how Khalila had so gingerly removed it from her no longer beating heart. He remembered how he hadn't been there to hold his sister's hand as she entered the deepest dark alone.

At the same time, he remembered a thousand moments with Aisha that he thought he had forgotten. He remembered kneeling around the family table, watching her scrunch up her nose at him behind their mother's back when vegetables that made both of them gag were served. He remembered how, as a child, she had loved the idea of music, and so had pounded out rhythms on pans instead of cooking in them and had taken ages to perform every chore because she had insisted on doing a dance routine of her own creation as she worked. He remembered her learning to walk and clinging to his fingers as she toddled around the family tent. He remembered her cheeky smile when she teased him, and her miffed glare when he tugged on her hair. He remembered her wild laughter when she was amused by a new joke or story he told her. It was as if he were remembering a million points in time, none of them appearing significant on the surface, that, when connected made up a lifetime. Mithros, he hadn't even known that he had stored any of these moments in his mind, and now they were all battering his brain at once. Perhaps this was what insanity felt like. Maybe madness was nothing more than remembering everything you believed you had forgotten.

A primal cry he could never have hoped to translate into any language comprehensible to human beings rose in his throat, and his jaw spasmed as he swallowed it. Once he had regained a semblance of control over himself, he asked shakily, "Is Cait dead, too?"

"Your whore was patched up by some of her fellow warrior women, I believe." Jaseena grunted. Her lips trembling, she spat, "My little girl died, while your slut lived. It was bad enough to mourn Aisha when I thought she was lost in the desert. Then I find out only after she had really been killed that she was still alive."

Here, tears slipped out of his mother's eyes, and she swiped them away furiously, as though her own grief enraged her. "Ever since I missed my courses for the first time when I was pregnant with Laila, I knew in the way that only a girl who fears stoning for fornication by getting pregnant outside of wedlock does that a child can change everything for the worse. Only now, when all I have left of one of my daughters is her mangled corpse and some leaky memories, I realize that a child can also change everything for the better."

Whacking the damp cloth she had used to rinse her son's forehead around the bowl, she exploded, "I always slapped my children when they did stupid, dangerous things like play too close to the fire, because I didn't want to lose my children, since everybody knows that a woman who loses her children isn't worth a copper. Women who can't succeed at being wives and mothers are complete failures at being women. It seems that the gods have decided that I should be a failure at womanhood. They appear to want me to lose my children. First, they make your father send you, Zahir, to the north, where you serve a northern king and pick up values of a culture I will never understand, so that my firstborn and only son is lost to me. Then, they make certain that I deal with my younger daughter's death twice. What crime did I commit that made me deserve to lose two of my children?"

"None, of course, Umm." Laila, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears, kissed her mother's cheek. Taking Jaseena's hand and guiding the older woman toward the women's side of the tent, she added quietly, "Let's get you dressed for the funeral."

As Jaseena, acting more disoriented than Zahir had ever seen her, followed Laila behind the curtain that separated the female domain from the rest of the tent, Hassan approached Zahir's sleeping mat.

"We should get you ready, too, handsome," he said, helping Zahir stand.

As he pulled on black silk breeches and a matching shirt, Zahir felt as if his limbs had turned to molten wax. He was grateful for Hassan's assistance with sleeves that refused to go over his arms and buttons too slippery for his fingers to gain purchase upon.

"Laila has treated Aisha with myrrh and placed herbs in her hair as well as in the white linen covering her," murmured Hassan, combing Zahir's hair, because Zahir's hands were quivering too much to hold a comb long enough to style his hair. "Her wounds have been left untouched, as befits a martyr, so that they may be healed by the Mother Goddess when she arrives in the Divine Realms."

"The Divine Realms," Zahir commented thickly, "appear to need a lot of heroes and heroines, since the gods steal all the world's heroes and heroines no matter how much we need them down here."

"They didn't steal you, lad." Gently, Hassan clapped Zahir's shoulder.

"I'm not a hero." Swallowing hard, Zahir shook his head. "Real heroes save people, and I can't save anyone, especially not those I most want to rescue. That's why Aisha is dead."

"The stories the Bazhir tell about you make it sound like you saved the entire desert from the Nameless Ones and from Haashim." Hassan's hands tightened around Zahir's shoulder. "They say that you are a hero and a savior of your people, willing to risk death for those who, deluded by Haashim and the Nameless Ones, reviled you."

"The Nameless Ones will threaten the desert again, because nobody, least of all me, will truly be able to defeat them until the world ends. Haashim is no longer our enemy, but maybe he never really was." With every word of his response, Zahir wondered if his voice would ever lose the dull, flat quality that had pervaded it since he laid eyes on his sister's corpse wrapped in linen as white as the altar upon which she had died.

Looking at the ground, which was as low and as filthy as he felt, he saw his face reflected in the water with which his mother had bathed him. There, gazing blankly back at him, was the image of the young man the Bazhir had showered with more contradictory titles than anybody could possibly fulfill: chief and traitor, Bazhir and northerner, hero and villain, savior and destroyer. According to them, he was an amalgamation of all these roles and more. To them, he was a living legend, but all he saw in the water was a haggard teenager who looked as if he hadn't slept in a month. His angular features had become thin and drawn. Dark circles lurked under eyes that seemed to be nothing more than deep hollows.

"People tell a lot of stories, but most of them are fantasies," he concluded, biting his lip, "and all the stories about me can't change who I really am."

In the water, Zahir saw Hassan nod, and that gesture satisfied him enough that he did not speak again until he departed the tent for Aisha's funeral.

He and Hassan carried Aisha to the pyre on the outskirts of the village, while Laila and Jaseena followed after them, each balancing one of the twins upon their hips. When, feeling oddly as if he were attending his own final rites, he, along with Hassan, placed Aisha gently on the pile of wood, Zahir noticed dimly that Khalila, her parents, Cait, and Keir were all assembled along with King Jonathan and the shaman of their tribe, Fawzan ibn Makin, who was Khalila's maternal grandfather.

"How can we perform Aisha's last rites like this when she was supposed to be dead a long time ago?" Zahir whispered to Laila, who was stroking Amaya's mop of black hair.

"Enough people died during your adventure that nobody is asking any questions about funerals," explained Laila in a hushed tone. "Anyone not in attendance will likely never even realize that we held one."

The wind ripping through the desert blew most of Shaman Fawzan's words away from Zahir's ears in gusts, but he did not mind for the chunks that were audible to him were not do much to soothe him: "In the wake of a death, when we need our faith most, we often find it crumbling inside of us. Death is the ultimate mystery, and the death of a young person is the type of death most difficult to explain. If you find your faith falling under the weight of unanswerable questions during this painful time, remember that the gods that took Aisha away from you also provided her with the breath of life."

After what Zahir had endured in Black City, he was willing to believe that might be true, but he still couldn't begin to comprehend why the gods would build beautiful, noble creatures like Aisha had been only to destroy them. Yes, Aisha's soul might have survived death, but she wouldn't be the same essence of Aisha that he had known and loved, which meant that her spirit was, for all practical purposes, gone forever.

"Remember if you are feeling resentful of the Black God for taking away Aisha that she was never yours," Shaman Fawzan rambled on illogically.

"Yes, she was, dimwit," hissed Zahir under his breath to Laila, who was sobbing into a handkerchief held in one hand while the other clutched onto Amaya. "She was _my_ little sister. She wasn't the Black God's sister. The Black God has his own sister. He had no right to take mine."

Such rage, he thought, had to be the sanest response to death that a thinking, feeling person could have. The shaman, however, probably felt differently, for the man was continuing, "Praise the gods not only for giving life, but for taking it away. Death grants eternal rest, peace, and wisdom to those who have led virtuous lives here. The gods' strength is proven when ours is gone, and their power is most apparent when we are at our weakest."

Shaking his head, because while such proclamations might be a solace at the funeral of an elderly woman, it was not at the last rite of a young woman's whose life had been over before her twentieth birthday, Zahir obediently lowered his head with the rest of the congregation and mumbled his way through the obligatory closing prayer. Then, his hand trembling, he accepted the burning torch the shaman extended toward him, and hoping that whatever was left of Aisha's spirit was at peace with the gods since he was about to destroy her body, he rested the blazing tip against the white linen engulfing Aisha's battered remains.

Tears scorching down his cheeks, he watched as the fire devoured his sister's body in flickering flames of orange, yellow, and red, as a memory of him telling her a story in whispers late at night when she was terrified of the dark rattled through him with all the devastating force of a Carthaki monsoon. Even then, she had wanted to hear about handsome, brave heroes and the strong, beautiful women who loved and saved them. Both of them had believed that evil could be fought and defeated. An actual battle, where they really had to spill their own blood or someone else's, was ultimately unimaginable to them, and death was nothing more than a nightmare to them.

Mithros, how he longed to return to those days of innocence and ignorance, but he could not, because the gods never gave people back their youths. He could just close his eyes, imagine that her spirit was still living inside him, and pretend that the wind echoing in his ears was the lyrical beat of her uncontrollable laughter. He could just envision her in paradise with their father and Trevor. He could just assure himself that she was waiting for him out of sight across the border that divided the physical and spiritual realms. He could only tell himself that she was still giggling and riding somewhere far away.

All he could do was hope that one day they would be reunited again, and that they would lie in a pasture beneath auburn skies. Then, they could dip their toes in cool, clear streams and wash away all the pain and sorrow that had burdened them all the years of their lives. He could just dream that he would once again hold her in his arms as the scent of sweet blossoms filled the air, as they both discovered that they were together in a paradise where the only tears were happy ones. After all, how could he ever find any semblance of peace in the terrible suffering of losing her without the hope that her soul was still alive and that he would be reunited with her when he crossed the border separating the living and the dead for himself?

Determined to handle Aisha's death like the strong leader he was supposed to be, Zahir opened his eyes to see Keir rubbing his nose and eyes with a handkerchief.

"You loved my sister, didn't you?" Zahir asked Keir, who was standing beside him.

"If loving someone means that losing them breaks your heart and your sanity, then, yes, I loved your sister, and I always will." Keir paused long enough to blow his nose before continuing hoarsely, "Oh, last night, I dreamed that Aisha and I were walking through the gardens we strolled through together at the palace. The flowers still grew, you know, but they didn't smell nearly as sweet as they did when I picked them for her and tucked them behind her pretty, little ears. I think I'll remember how those ears felt forever, because it's the tiny things about her—the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled and how her nose wrinkled when something disgusted her—that I recall most clearly. My memories always take me back to another place and time when I was with her, and I keep thinking about what she would say or do in every situation only to realize a second later that she won't be saying or doing anything ever again. I keep wishing that I could go back in time and tell I love her just one more time."

"She loved you, too, I think." Zahir could hear his voice breaking, as if it was determined to be as shattered as his heart. "She'd want you to move on with your life and even fall in love with somebody else if possible. She wouldn't want you to die with her."

"I know." Keir ducked his head. "I will find a way to live without her. Despite my horrible suffering, I will discover some sense of peace in my life again, as the pain of living without her lessens. Perhaps how quickly we forget the deceased is death's greatest horror, and how swiftly we lose the crippling pain of living without someone we love is the most agonizing grief of all. After all, as long as we remember the dead, they are still alive, but once we forget them, it is as if they never existed, and we are responsible for slaying them."

"Aisha will live on long after our memories of her have faded," Zahir said with more conviction than he felt, hoping the vision of his father and Trevor had been real and that Aisha was truly in paradise now. "She's smiling down at us from paradise right now, and she's waiting until it's our time to join her."

Before Keir could reply, Cait, her eyes swollen, approached them, asking, "May I have a word with you alone, Zahir?"

"Yes." Nodding, Zahir followed her out of earshot but not out of sight of the other mourners.

"I'm sorry about Aisha's passing," she burst out as soon as they were alone. "I can't imagine how painful losing her must be for you. I miss her so much that the memory of her is like a constant ache in my chest. She told amazing jokes and helped me learn so much about riding like a natural. My life will always be a little darker and emptier without the light of her presence."

"As will mine." Zahir choked on the words. "I would gladly have died in her place. I never imagined that she would die because of me."

"I didn't think that our love would endanger her, either. I thought that any Bazhir who had an issue with our relationship would attack us, not your family members." Cait's lower lip trembled, and she broke off, trying to regain her composure.

"No more Bazhir will kidnap or torture anyone because of our relationship," Zahir assured her. "Haashim's supporters are dead, and Haashim doesn't wish to fight me anymore."

"Haashim wasn't the problem, Zahir." Grimly, Cait shook her head. "He was a symptom of the problem. The problem was that the Bazhir don't want their precious blood mingling with northerner blood and don't wish their sacred customs to be profaned by northern ideas or traditions. They will never be content to have their Voice married to a northern warrior woman like me. We can't live with the fear that they'll lash out against your mother or your older sister next because of our relationship. We could imperil ourselves for the sake of our love, but we can't sacrifice any more innocents upon the altar of our love. That's simply not fair, and we're just people."

Zahir, sensing what she was going to say next, stared at her feeling as though he had just been disemboweled. Knowing that this might be the last time he looked at her like this, he drank in the sight of her: her crisp beauty; the way she stood, moved, and talked; and the compassion in her eyes for him. He had come so close to having her in his life forever, to sharing things with her that she would not share with anyone else. So close to knowing her the best. Loving her the best.

He noticed that she was looking at him with the same expression of endless loss, and he whispered, "Don't look at me like that. You look as though you're saying good-bye."

"I'm sorry." Tears glistened in Cait's eyes, and she tried to blink them away furiously. "I know that this is an impossibly rough time for you with Aisha's passing, but I hope you'll see in the future that a clean break was best for you. The Bazhir love you now, and you need to continue to earn their support by settling down with a proper Bazhir girl like Khalila. You and her seemed to relate well to each other. I was jealous when I saw the two of you together before, but now I just with the both of you well. The two of you deserve nothing but the best after all you've suffered."

"You don't want to be with me?" Zahir felt like his heart had been pierced with a sword but the rest of his body had stubbornly refused to perish. His ears only heard the rejection, not the benediction. How could she reject him just when their worst enemy among the Bazhir had been defeated and all their dreams should be coming true? Wasn't he—the so-called hero—supposed to get the girl he loved at the end of the story? "Did you forget our kisses in the garden? Did you forget our passion when we were alone together at the seashore? Did all of that mean nothing to you?"

"Of course it meant something to me." Cait blinked more tears out of her eyes. "I'm just finally facing what we both always knew to be true and refused to believe. The rules will not change for us. They'll break us like they broke your sister if we violate them, and, if you don't become Voice because of me, we would both regret that every day. Sooner or later, that regret would grow to be greater than our love."

"I did know everything you said, and I even told myself once that I was going to leave you, but how I could go about doing that." He shook his head. "I didn't want to be the one who made the decision to end our relationship. I guess I needed you to be the one to decide to end it. I was so afraid of hurting you that I wanted to let go of my own will and risk being wounded. Is that what love is? If it is, maybe I'm not cut out for it, after all."

"You know I don't like to drag things out." Folding her arms across her chest, Cait took a step away from him. "Let's make a pact. There's only one way this is going to work. We have to forget that it ever happened."

"Forget?" Zahir echoed incredulously. "I can't forget!"

"Well, you just have to," Cait insisted. "You have to push it down. You have to bury it. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I'm going to do it. I'm not going to think of you or wonder if we did the right thing. There will be no special looks exchanged when we see each other. You will never mention what happened between us again. We will be friends when we meet. Friends _only_. I am not going to look back, not once."

She stomped her foot, as if stamping the memory of their love into the sand, and Zahir winced at the sound as though she had struck him. She was a warrior now, willing her body, mind, and heart to obey her. "And you will never remind me," she repeated. "Not by a word or a look. Promise me."

"Cait, I—"

"Promise me!"

Zahir swallowed before choking out one of the hardest vows he had ever made. "I promise."

For an instant, her face softened. It was the last time, he knew, that she would look at him that way.

"And I hope." Her voice caught in her throat. "That we don't see each other for a long time."

A chasm of longing that he would never be able to fill burst open inside Zahir's chest, and he thought that he couldn't do what she was demanding of him. Numbly, he took a step toward her. He had to touch her one more time. Maybe that would change everything.

"No." She backed away from him. "It starts now. May the gods bless you."

Then as he watched, nearly blinded by his own tears, she hurried away from him toward the mass of tents. Refusing to believe that she had left, he continued to stretch out his hand only to feel the empty space where she had stood.

"So, you're another Bazhir who can't accept the loss of someone you love," commented Khalila, whose black dress and veil were far more disheveled than usual, as she sidled up beside him. "What does it mean to be a faithful Bazhir unable to accept loss? Perhaps that's a riddle we can answer together, Zahir."

"You have a morbid sense of humor." Zahir snorted. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

"Your sister made a habit of reminding me of that fact every time we spoke to one another." Khalila emitted a noise that seemed to be a cross between a sob and a giggle. "That adds up to be quite a lot, but I don't need to tell you that, because you know how often Aisha and I spoke."

"Of course." Zahir nodded, even as he wondered if he really did have any idea how often Aisha and Khalila would have spoken. They would have shared laughter and gossip while fetching water from the oasis and cutting up food outside their tents. They would have traded stories over mending. They would have exchanged greetings every time they passed in the streets. They would have rode off into the desert together in the mornings before chores and shared secrets. In short, they would have engaged in more conversations than the most skilled mathematician could count.

"I miss her so much." Khalila's hands clenched around the folds of her dress. "Whenever I helped her put on her veil, she would grumble that if any man needed us to cover ourselves from head to toe to be kept from falling into lust, he should be blindfolded and escorted everywhere by his mother. That would always make me laugh so hard that I couldn't the veil over her hair right. When we talked about cooking, she always said that the only food she enjoyed making was mud pies, and when we shelled peas, she'd always ask if I really felt that using my Gift to shell the vegetables was an abuse of my magic."

Zahir smiled, because Khalila was relating words he could easily imagine Aisha saying. At the same time, it occurred to him that he understood little about female friendships and that perhaps Khalila had known Aisha better than he had. The female side of the tent was a mystery to him, but that was where girls exchanged recipes as a sign of friendship the way boys traded combat tips. That was where girls giggled about boys they found attractive or who found them irresistible in much the same fashion that boys boasted about their romantic conquests or compared the merits of various members of the female gender. That was where girls combed one another's hair and fixed each other's clothing, their deft fingers brisk and gentle as they participated in beauty rituals Zahir would never understand.

"You knew her so well," Zahir muttered, flushing. "Perhaps you knew her even better than I did."

"You knew her best, and she loved you more than she loved me or anyone else," Khalila assured him. Then, her voice trembling, she went on, "Goddess have mercy on me. I just keep thinking that, if I had been a bit stronger, Aisha wouldn't be dead now."

"That's stupid." Zahir was sure that any tact he had ever possessed had been burned with Aisha's body, leaving him with all the sympathy of a blunt axe. "You couldn't have been any smarter or stronger."

"I wasn't nearly as strong or as smart as you." Khalila's gaze locked on his, and her eyes were dark, haunted by shadows, and wounded. "I never told you what my best trick was, Zahir, and you were unlucky enough to have to witness it. It's superfluous for me to tell you now, but my greatest gift is the ability to make one small move and one simple choice that kills dozens of men. Dozens. I certainly prove that the choices of one impact the futures of many."

"It's never too late for a person to accept his or her shortcomings and attempt to change them," Zahir pointed out with all the delicacy he could manage in the midst of his raw grief.

"I wish that was true." Zahir could hear the sad smile hidden by Khalila's veil. "But it isn't. Not always."

"Yes, it is," Zahir countered firmly. "Where there's life, there's hope."

"Please." Khalila rolled her eyes. "Neat, clichéd phrases never solve anything."

"Not if they remain nothing but neat, clichéd phrases." Zahir's mouth twitched into the beginnings of a grin. "They have to spark remorse, resolve, and action. Then they can change everything."

"Khalila!" Khalila's father, Waahid, snapped, striding up to them and glowering first at his daughter and then at Zahir. "That is quite enough un-chaperoned private conversation with an unmarried man for one day."

"The unmarried man we're talking about is Zahir," Khalila remarked impatiently. "I've been having un-chaperoned conversations with him all my life. Why should that change just because Aisha is dead?"

"I know who we're talking about, or else I would have asked his name, girl, and I don't want you speaking to him without my permission," growled Waahid. "Now, your mother wants you to help her with some washing. Run along home before I take a stick to you for your impudence."

"Running along home now, Walidi." Khalila ducked her head, as she employed the ancient Bazhir word for father. Then, she pivoted and headed back toward the cluster of tents, but not before murmuring to Zahir, "Don't worry. He's all bark and no bite. He hasn't thrashed me in years."

Waahid continued to scowl at his daughter's retreating figure for a moment. Then, he observed tartly, "I had an immense respect for your father, and I like to believe he raised you to be a gentleman before his untimely death. Therefore, I will say only I assume you know a gentleman never plays with a lady's affections, and so I will not insult your honor by warning you not to toy with my daughter's heart."

"I would never toy with Khalila's heart." Zahir gritted his teeth, thinking that Waahid had insulted his honor quite effectively anyway. "She was my dead sister's best friend."

"Yes, she was." Grimly, Waahid nodded. "No matter how foolish it might have been and how dangerous it was for her in the end, Khalila was loyal to your sister until death parted them. Don't reward her steadfastness with inconstancy."

"You speak as though I have a habit of betraying women." Zahir's jaw tightened.

"Well, you weren't very loyal to your northern girl when you had a private conversation with my daughter," pointed out Waahid dryly.

"My northern girl just chose to end our relationship."

"And already you are attracted to my daughter like a bee to a honeycomb." Waahid grunted. "That isn't much of an assurance to me, Zahir ibn Alhaz. Women fall when their men have affections that blow about with the wind, and I will not see my only daughter fall because of any man."

"She wouldn't fall if she married me." His lips thinning, Zahir glared at Khalila's father. "She would be wedding a chief and the future Voice. Plenty of Bazhir fathers would be happy to give their daughters to me even if you aren't."

"Marry one of those girls then," blustered Waahid. "Their fathers won't care if you will love and honor them."

"I don't want to marry one of them," Zahir said simply, discovering that he meant every word as it burst from his lips without prior thought. "I want to marry your daughter. She is clever, brave, funny, and strong. She has a great sense of style and beautiful eyes. She can comfort me and challenge me in the same breath. She can make me laugh when I want to cry, and she understands me. I already love and honor her, and I would have her as my bride to love and honor forevermore."

"Humph." Waahid exhaled gustily. "In that case, you may come around for supper tonight and being discovering whether my daughter is willing to love, honor, and obey you for the rest of her life. Just be warned that she is stubborn like your sister was, and whoever marries her will need to keep a firm hand on the reins."

Without waiting for a response, Waahid bustled off toward the tents, while Zahir gaped after him, baffled as to how they had progressed from threats to supper invitations and marital advice. Before he could even start solving this puzzle, though, a hand squeezed his shoulder. When he spun around to see who had grabbed him, he found himself gazing up into the king's cerulean eyes.

"I'm terribly sorry for your loss, Zahir," King Jonathan said softly before Zahir could speak a word.

"I've heard that a lot today, sire." Zahir's jaw tightened as he reflected that the king had never known Aisha and had never seen her eyes ablaze with hope or humor. His knightmaster could not even begin to comprehend how it felt to know that hope was finally squashed and that humor forever stifled. "You're the only one who made it sound like I had misplaced an expensive belt, though, so congratulations for that. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that I've been making some negotiations on the marriage market. Currently, I have a bid placed on a Bazhir girl who can cook, clean, and bear children, which should be enough to please you and the tribes. For her part, she is intrigued by the north and wouldn't mind accompanying me there if duty required her to. I could say that I think we love each other and will be happy together, but I know that my love and my happiness mean nothing to you, Your Majesty."

"Your happiness matters very much to me, Squire." His knightmaster patted his shoulder. "I'm very pleased that you've found a girl you love who will make a suitable partner in every way."

"I thought that I loved, Cait." Zahir bit his lip. "Now I think that I love Khalila. How can I love both of them?"

"Love is like lightning." King Jonathan grinned, his white teeth gleaming in the desert sunlight. "It only strikes the lucky twice."

"I suppose the lucky die the second time lightning or love strikes them." Zahir wrinkled his nose. "How heartening, sire."

"It is when you factor in the fact that the unfortunate are killed the first time lightening or love strikes them." Gesturing at a nearby boulder, the king added, "Would you care to sit down? I'd like to discuss something important with you."

"You and half the Bazhir, apparently," grumbled Zahir, seating himself on the rock his knightmaster had indicated.

"I know you may not have eaten much lately." King Jonathan withdrew two pasties, wrapped in parchment, from his pocket and asking, "Would you prefer a cheese and asparagus pastry or a cheese and onion one?"

"I'll risk the bad breath, Your Majesty, and have the onion one." As the king handed him the onion and cheese pastry, Zahir went on, "I haven't liked asparagus since the accident."

"The accident?" His knightmaster arched an eyebrow.

"When I accidently ate asparagus at the formative age of three," explained Zahir, smirking as he bit into the pastry and decided it was delicious. The onions were caramelized, the cheese was melted and pungent, and the crust neither burned nor flaky.

"I'm glad that, despite recent events, you can maintain a true sense of perspective," King Jonathan remarked wryly, taking a bite of the asparagus pastry. "I expect that you know by now that you are something of a hero to the Bazhir now."

"I'm not a hero." Zahir shook his head.

"You defeated the Ysandir and pushed Haashim back from the brink," the king reminded him. "What do you call that if not being heroic?"

"Being obstinate," retorted Zahir. "Anyway, you know that I didn't defeat the Nameless Ones, sire. They'll be around until the end of the world, and they are at best temporarily inconvenienced by what I did. As for Haashim, he pulled me back from the brink as much as I yanked him away from it."

"Come now, Zahir," his knightmaster chided. "False humility is half the sin of hubris."

"It's not false humility to tell you that I'm no more a hero than Garvey is a genius, Your Majesty," hissed Zahir. "If you think I'm a hero, you're crazy."

"You are a hero." King Jonathan's blue eyes were as earnest and as unflinching as Zahir had ever seen them. "Trust me on this if nothing else. In my life, I've been blessed to know a couple of heroes, and one of them is you."

"You don't just want to tell me I'm a hero." Zahir's eyes narrowed, because he understood how the king's cunning mind operated now. "You want me to do something based upon that knowledge."

"I want you to accept the admiration of the Bazhir for your heroism, I want you to allow them to tell their stories about you, and I want you to participate in a ceremony tomorrow that would officially mark you as the candidate for the next Voice," his knightmaster answered. "It's nothing to onerous once you understand that you are more than a man now, Zahir. To the Bazhir, you are a symbol of everything good in the world. You give them hope. You set an example that they can aspire to live up to. Just by existing, you make people want to be better than they are."

"But it's not me," Zahir exploded. "It's some made-up man using my name. A mythical hero. A fairy-tale knight."

"People need heroes, Squire, and stories like this are how people become heroes," replied the king steadily.

"I thought heroes became heroes by doing something heroic." Zahir snorted.

"You know what I mean," King Jonathan remarked impatiently. "Don't act thick, Zahir."

"Yes, I know exactly what you mean." Zahir frowned and tried to swallow the bitter taste flooding his mouth, making him lose all interest in the pastry he held in his hands. "That's my whole problem. It's like you're trying to make me larger than life."

"You are larger than life," rapped out his knightmaster. "That's what I'm telling you. You are the light in the darkness and the stories about you will only make your light shine all the brighter so that all the Bazhir can see it. I would think you would want your light to guide as many people as possible."

"Maybe you're right," Zahir conceded, his tone heavy and his eyes dark. "How much harm can their stories do? Let them talk about me until their tongues break. It doesn't matter. None of the stories they will tell about me can change who I really am."

"So," he continued crisply before the king could say anything else, "if I'm the hero of the stories, is Haashim the villain?"

"I suppose you could say that." King Jonathan's lips thinned. "Haashim and Nasira have been blamed for allying with the Nameless Ones and for the deaths of many Bazhir. They have been sentenced by the Bazhir chiefs, with my approval, to be stoned tomorrow after your ceremony."

"You can't stone them." Horrified, Zahir shook his head.

"People are dead because of them," countered King Jonathan. "Justice demands their deaths."

"Their deaths won't resurrect Aisha or anyone else," argued Zahir vehemently. "Is more death, destruction, and blame really what the Bazhir need right now? Wouldn't healing and mercy be far more valuable to them? Besides, Haashim only killed people that most Bazhir wanted dead, and, while he tempted them, they gave into his temptation as much as he surrendered to the Nameless Ones. If he's to die for his weakness, all of the Bazhir who gave into him should be executed."

"Many of them were killed in Black City," his knightmaster pointed out sharply. "That's why the Bazhir feel the need to punish Haashim and Nasira."

"Of course." Zahir was choking on rage and resentment. "They wouldn't want to admit that they are still as vengeful and as prone to violence as they were when Haashim held sway over them. They would never wish to acknowledge that Haashim might be correct about the darkness lurking inside every one of them. They wouldn't want to believe that people can be kept from murder but not from hatred, from rape but not from lust, and from theft but not from avarice. They have that privilege because only Haashim and I have been trapped in the darkness deeper than night that the Nameless Ones can create, and only he and I have come out of it again. They don't realize that as long as they ignore the darkness inside of themselves it will continue to grow. They don't understand that they have to acknowledge it and overcome it if they truly want to belong to the light."

"Haashim is a foul person, and his life will end tomorrow," snapped King Jonathan. "Don't compromise your newfound popularity among the Bazhir by fighting a battle you can't win. Attend the ceremony tomorrow, and don't make a fuss about two stonings you don't condone."

"I thought I was meant to be a leader and a hero." Zahir scowled. "Aren't heroes and leaders supposed to fight righteous battles they know they cannot win?"

"Heroes might, but leaders, while prodding their people along, never push their people too far." The king shook his head. "Leaders do not endanger their authority by performing actions that are both inconsistent with justice and the mood of their subjects. Mercy is a wonderful virtue, Zahir, but it can also be a terrible mistake."

"Fine," snarled Zahir, stamping his foot in the sand and kicking up a cloud of it. "I'll be a figurehead ruled by the whims of a passionate people if that's all you expect the hero and leader you worked so hard to build to be. Right now, though, I would like to, with your permission, visit Haashim and Nasira. They deserve to go to their deaths knowing that at least one person—perhaps the being with the most reason to despise them—doesn't hate them and forgives them. Nobody deserves to die thinking that they are reviled by all."


	67. Chapter 67

Twilight and the Taming of the Shrew

From the knot of stony-faced Bazhir guards stationed outside the tent, Zahir could tell which one imprisoned Haashim and Nasira. Deciding that now was as fine a time as any to take advantage of his current heroic status among the tribes, he approached the sentries, announcing, "I wish to see Haashim ibn Ghaazi and Nasira bint Mahmud immediately."

"The prisoners are dangerous," one of the sentinels closest to the canvas tent flaps informed him. "It would be best if nobody but guards had contact with them until they are brought out for stoning tomorrow."

"Neither of them are a threat to me," Zahir countered, hardening his voice and eyes. This was a moment where he had to be sharp, rather than soft, in order to get his way. "They're here because I already defeated them."

"Admire your trophies if you must, then," growled the sentry, stepping away from the flap, lowering his spear, and gesturing for his companions to do the same. "Don't blame us if they attack you."

Seeing no need to antagonize the guards further with a retort when he has accomplished what he wanted, Zahir entered the tent. Instantly, his nose was assaulted with the nauseatingly mingled stenches of putrid food, unwashed human, and human excrement. Looking around the dirty tent floor, he spotted two filled chamber pots swarmed by flies, platters of bread and meat growing colonies of mold, and shackles. His eyes followed the chains until he saw Nasira and Haashim, bound at the hands and ankles to two wooden poles on opposite sides of the tent.

Since she was closer to him and might be the easier prisoner to confront, Zahir walked slowly toward Nasira. Reminding himself of how important it was to look her in the eyes and absolve her of everything before she was executed, he forced himself to meet her gaze. He saw that her eyes were red-rimmed and dark shadows lurked underneath them like ghosts. She must have cried more and slept even less than he had. Maybe she deserved that, but the knowledge of her suffering didn't bring him peace. Perhaps nothing—not even loving Khalila—would ever really bring him peace again.

"I'm sorry," whispered Nasira. Her lips, he could see, were cracked from a lack of water, and cuts opened along them as she spoke, coating her white teeth with a crimson sheen. "I never should have betrayed your sister to Haashim. She was always nice to me when our tribes got together on feast days, and I know that you loved her. She was your life, and, because of me, she is dead."

"I forgive you," Zahir said, thinking that it would be impossible for anyone with a compassionate bone in his body to look upon such a broken young woman without sympathy. Anyway, it wasn't as though hating Nasira would bring Aisha back to life. All that was left to him was forgiveness and the hope that new love could fill the hollow Aisha's death had sliced into his heart.

"How can you?" asked Nasira with more than a tinge of hysteria. Tears began to flow down her cheeks, making tracks down her filthy face. "Because of me your sister was clapped in irons and beaten. Because of me, she suffered an agonizing death. "

"That doesn't mean you deserve to be stoned or locked up here." Zahir managed to choke the words out through his tightening throat.

"Yes, it does." Nasira shook her wrists so that the clanking of her chains echoed through the tent. "It took me being locked up in these to understand the agony Aisha must have experienced when she was bound to that horrible altar in Black City. Maybe when I'm stoned I'll begin to understand how she must have felt when Haashim and his men killed her. Of course, I'll never really know what she went through, because I'm suffering and dying for my crimes, and she was suffering and dying because of my betrayal of you, but, if this punishment can make me start to understand the nightmare I inflicted upon her, I deserve every second of it."

"That's not true." Zahir shook his head, his voice rising vehemently. "My sister is dead. Nothing can change that. Your death won't bring her back to life, so your execution is pointless. I'd rather see you atone for what you did to my sister through your life instead of through your death."

"You might, but I wouldn't." Nasira emitted a raspy noise that might have been intended to serve as a laugh in a girl whose humor had evaporated long ago. "Life hasn't treated me very kindly, Zahir. My mother died in childbirth before she could give my father any sons. My father blamed me for killing her and for not being a boy, but he loved her too much to remarry, which only increased his resentment of the fact that I was a daughter, not a son. He beat me often, but he always made sure the bruises and cuts were covered by clothing. He pinched me and pulled my hair when we were alone. I was happy when you noticed me at tribe meetings, because you never pinched me or pulled my hair. You were even gentle with your sisters when you teased them. They felt safe with you, and so did I. I thought that if we married, the beatings, the pinchings, and the hair-pullings would stop, but my father arranged for me to marry your cousin instead, and that was like jumping from the pot into the fire to escape the heat. Then, when your cousin was slain, and we could have been together, you chose a northern girl over me, and I was left with Haashim. I would never kill myself. For all my crimes, I was never weak enough or cowardly enough to do that, but I will go through a just death with as much grace and dignity as possible."

It was on the tip of Zahir's tongue to point out that stoning was designed to deny its victims any semblance of grace or dignity, but, at the last second, he thought that there was no reason to make Nasira's final hours even more miserable, and clamped his jaw shut. Then, since she was really dying and it cost him nothing to give her a final gift, he leaned forward and brushed his lips gingerly against hers. He could feel the cuts in her lips, and taste the blood from them—blood that carried the distinct tang of death and despair offset by the faintest sweetness of barely imagined hope and mercy.

"You're still beautiful to me," he murmured, pulling away from her.

"Glad I look nice to somebody." Nasira's mouth twisted. "I feel like I've never been uglier."

"Change your feelings," Zahir told her, his eyes locking on hers. "For once in your life, love yourself and not me."

Before she could recover enough from her astonishment at this statement to reply, he strode over to Haashim. He wasn't certain how to address the man who had killed his sister and whom he had wanted to kill before he had understood just how much the Nameless Ones thrived off and created desires for vengeance, so he was grateful when Haashim, whose eyes were closed, spoke first.

"Stoning is a terrible end." Haashim sounded as though he were struggling to talk through a mouthful of sand. "I forced it on a lot of people—more than I want to count. When I was little, I watched my older sister and her lover—a man who wasn't her husband—get stoned for adultery. I loved my sister and the young man stoned alongside her far more than I liked the stuffy old man who was her husband. My heart was torn apart with every rock hurled at my sister and her unlucky lover, but one day I was the one hurling stones at adulterers and killing people's sisters. I still don't know how the change happened or why it did. I just know it did and wish it hadn't. I'm sorry, Zahir ibn Alhaz, for killing your sister. Nobody should have to live with the pain of losing their sister, and I forgot that."

"I forgive you," Zahir choked out, because he understood, even if Haashim didn't, that bearing grudges had ultimately been what resulted in Haashim being tied up in a tent, awaiting stoning.

"Forgiveness is more than I deserve." Haashim opened his eyes so Zahir could see how bleak and haunted they were.

"It's more than any of us deserve." Zahir tentatively stretched out a hand across the inches, which felt like leagues, separating him and Haashim, and squeezed the man's hand. "That's the point."

"Do you think that I'll see my sister in paradise?" Haashim's eyes drifted shut again, as if his lids were too heavy for him to hold up. "Stoning is a brutal death. If I accept it as the price for my crimes, do you think that's enough to atone for what I've done? Is it enough to suffer the worst death I can and acknowledge that pain is nowhere near what I've caused others?"

"I hope it is," Zahir said, swallowing a lump in his throat. "I hope it's the end of your suffering, because you didn't deserve to have your sister killed or to be used as a tool for the Nameless Ones' hatred and vengeance."

"No one ever gets what they deserve in life." Haashim tilted his head back against the splintery pole. "Idiots lead tribes because of birthright. Parents beat children in anger and frustration without sufficient cause. Neighbors spread a million lies about each other. Good people suffer and die while wicked ones prosper and live. My mistake was always in trying to give people what they deserve—in trying to make the wicked pay for their crimes."

"A mistake I made when I killed my own uncle in cold blood." Releasing Haashim's hand, Zahir stepped away from the man once more. "You and I are not so different from one another. That's why we hated and feared each other so much. That's why we could pull each other back from the brink. We wouldn't have left Black City without one another. You were redeemed from the moment you saved me from becoming a tool of the Nameless Ones. Go to your death knowing that, in my eyes, you already paid your debt, and that, just as there will always be a darkness in me, there was always a light in you."

"You'll be a great Voice one day. It's a pity that I won't be around to see your justice and mercy," he heard Haashim say as he hurried out of the tent, turning his head away from the guards, so they could not see the tears filling his eyes.

Numbly, recognizing that the sun was starting to set, staining the sky the color of bruises and blood, Zahir returned to Hassan and Laila's tent.

"Where have you been?" demanded his mother as he entered, looking up from spreading mashed olives on slices of flatbread. "The rumor mill has been grinding all day about you, boy."

"When isn't it?" mumbled Zahir, disappearing behind the partition that divided the male side of the tent from the main area. As he washed his face and brushed his hair—because if he was going to court someone as lovely as Khalila, he had to do it with at least a little style—he added, "Seriously, do the Bazhir ever talk about the nefarious exploits of anyone besides me?"

"Of course they do, imbecile." Even through the screen, he could feel the heat of his mother's glare. "You would know that if you listened to gossip. Speaking of gossip, if it's true that you have ended your relationship with the northern whore and are pursuing one with Khalila bint Waahid, you'll probably enjoy a steaming vat of gossip and tea with her before you have supper with her family. She's a smart girl, prettier and stronger than any frail northern flower could ever be."

"Is that your way of saying you approve of my choice?" Zahir asked, as, his preparations completed, he returned to the main tent.

"Humph." Jaseena's lips pressed together in a firm line. "She is a thousand times more suitable than a northern slut, and, even as far as Bazhir women go, she isn't a bad one. She's just something of a shrew like Aisha was, so she'll require a firm hand on the reins to tame her before or after marriage."

Thinking that his mother accusing anyone of being a shrew was akin to the snail calling the turtle too slow, Zahir said coldly, "I love her because she is shrew. If I didn't want a shrew, I would have picked another girl instead of trying to tame her."

"You won't be saying that a month into your marriage, I assure you. You'll be wanting to tame the shrew if it's the last thing you do," grumbled Jaseena, but he ignored her as he escaped through the canvas flaps and made his way down the sandy lanes between the tents until he reached the one belonging to Khalila's family.

As he approached it, he saw her sitting, cross-legged, on a rug woven from orange and scarlet threads as vibrant as the sunset behind her.

"My father said you would be coming by to have supper with me this evening," Khalila remarked, gesturing for him to sit on the carpet across from her with a small, movable cypress table between them. "It's good to know that I'm so intimidating you have to make appointments to visit me through my father, rather than through me."

"It's traditional for a young man to arrange to meet a young woman through her father," answered Zahir, watching as she filled a teacup with black tea from a pot on the low table.

"Milk? Sugar? Honey?" Khalila asked, holding out dishes containing each of the condiments as she spoke. "Anyway, Zahir, just because something is traditional, doesn't mean we should do it. I mean, banditry is a custom as old as any, but if that proves we should all find highways and rob as many passerby as possible, I'll eat my veil."

"Honey, please," Zahir said, smiling as he watched her deftly drip a spoonful of honey into his tea and mix it in until the tea was a soft chestnut color. "Putting aside your outrageous banditry example, there are many times when tradition should be honored, especially when a young man is trying to convince a father to let him court a beloved daughter."

"Are we courting?" As she stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea, Khalila arched an eyebrow.

"I would like to be," Zahir responded bluntly, taking a nervous swig of his tea and regretting doing so as his tongue burned.

"Because you need a girl to kiss now that your relationship with Cait is at an end?" pressed Khalila, her eyebrows lifting still further.

"Because you're funny and smart," Zahir said. "Because you're pretty and brave. Because you were loyal to my sister until the end. Because you accompanied me into Black City. Because I have fallen in love with you."

"A couple of days ago, you were probably saying the same sort of things to Cait." Delicately, Khalila took a sip of her tea and returned the porcelain cup to the cypress table. "How do I know that you won't be saying almost the same thing to another girl a week from now?"

"Because I promise that I'll never betray you with another woman and that I have every intention of marrying you if you will have me." Zahir's eyes lanced into hers, trying to find the soul that matched his in her gaze. "I loved Cait. I won't insult you or her by denying that, but it was a fairy tale love. It was doomed not to work in the real world. The love between you and me isn't like that. It's meant to work in the real world. The Bazhir will accept you, because you are one of their own, and you will happily live in the north with me if my duty takes me there, since you want to learn about northern life, unlike most Bazhir women. You know how to cook, clean, sew, and gossip, so you already know how to do everything I would want a wife to do. You are strong enough and smart enough to challenge me and support me when necessary. I love you, and, in the real world we inhabit, I think we fit together in a way that even Cait and I would never have."

"I see." Khalila's hands trembled slightly as she brought her tea to her lips again but seemed to forget to sip. "I won't deny that you were the first and only boy I was ever infatuated with. To be blunt, Aisha found it disgusting, but she agreed never to tell you my secret unless I asked her to. Maybe she'd smile to know that I never have gotten over my attraction to you, and that nothing you have ever done—and you've done some stupid and cruel things just like I have—could ever make me see you as anything less than handsome, brave, and self-sacrificing. It would be a joy to be bound to you for life."

"To love, to honor, and to obey?" Zahir beamed at her, thinking that joy really was such a simple thing. It sprang from a single, shining source: his love for her was reciprocated, and there was no denying that he did love her. He danced with her in his dreams, his feet feeling as if they could fly. He talked and laughed with her to a rhythm that seemed to match the beating of his heart as he poured out his soul. He wanted to get as close to her as possible, even though he already felt as if they were connected to one another forever.

"To love and to honor, unquestionably." Khalila's lips quirked. "To obey, that might be difficult. Obstinacy, rather than obedience, is my strong suit. My father probably warned you already that it would require a firm hand to tame the shrew that I am."

"So did my mother." Zahir felt his lips twisting into an answering smirk. "I happen to disagree with both of them. I think that you need to be treated with respect and gentleness, like all women do."

"Is that how you'll tame the shrew?" Khalila giggled.

"No, silly." Zahir reached across the table to squeeze her fingers and felt a fire ignite in his bloodstream. "I don't want to tame the shrew at all."

"Hmm." Khalila tickled his palm with his fingers. "How will you explain to the Bazhir that you have an untamed shrew for a wife when women are supposed to be subservient to their husbands?"

"Husbands are supposed to lead their wives like the First Voice led his people," Zahir responded, suddenly grateful for all the religious texts he had been forced to read over the course of his squireship and childhood. "The First Voice led his people with humility, sacrifice, and compassion. He was more concerned with serving his people than with having them serve him. It stands to reason, then, that husbands should be more focused on serving their wives in love, humility, and self-sacrifice than on having their wives serve them. Wives are supposed to obey their husbands like they would the First Voice, because subordinating themselves to their husbands teaches women how to relinquish their pride and trust in somebody they love. Bazhir marriage isn't about turning the man into a tyrant, and the woman into a slave. It's about providing the man and the woman a chance to grow together in love and humility."

"I suppose that the only Bazhir who could take issue with that are those who don't deserve to be married," murmured Khalila, winking at him. "One day soon, you'll be as slippery with your words as our current Voice."


	68. Chapter 68

The Sun Also Rises

"_What hath a man more for all his labor that he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth standeth forever. The sun riseth, and goeth down, and returneth to his place, and there rising again." –Ecclesiastes 1:3-5. _

Kneeling before King Jonathan—no, Zahir sternly corrected himself mentally, the Voice, not King Jonathan, when he was partaking in Bazhir rites—Zahir tried to forget the circle of tribesmen and their veiled wives who had their eyes rooted on him and the Voice. Instead, he focused on the golden sand beneath his knees, hoping that he would not humiliate himself, his family, or his people by messing up this initiation ceremony…

"Zahir ibn Alhaz." Through his nerves, Zahir heard the Voice acknowledge him, his tone as commanding and compelling as ever. Now that he had been acknowledged, Zahir was supposed to look up. Feeling like he would greatly have preferred to continue to scrutinize the sand until time ended, he raised his face and gazed up into the Voice's eyes.

The instant he made eye contact with the older man, Zahir knew that he had made a mistake. Those piercing eyes the same color as a cloudless summer sky told him quite plainly that he was not cut out to rule. The authority and charisma that sparked in the Voice's eyes announced to him more effectively than any words could have that Zahir would never be half as good a leader as this man was. What was Zahir even doing here? How could he presume to lead his people when he couldn't even make good decisions for himself?

Suddenly, Zahir wanted to flee from the ceremony, screaming that he was not fit to rule and that the Voice had to pick a more suitable member of the tribes to lead them next. Unfortunately, that would probably fall under the category of humiliating himself, his family, and his people, as he had been hoping not to do. Besides, his legs didn't seem to feel like moving, anyway, the Voice's blue eyes seemed to have frozen him in place.

"You wish to eventually take my place as leader of your people," the Voice went on, not noticing Zahir's inner turmoil or mercifully ignoring it if he did.

"I do." Even though that was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment, Zahir's tongue knew its duty and clearly offered the traditional response. Then, as his head reflexively lowered as custom dictated, his mind still struggled to absorb not only what was happening to him but what he was doing.

"It is a grave honor to serve as the Voice of the tribes," the Voice informed him. "You will be responsible for defending your people, as well as enforcing their ancient laws and customs. They will turn to you as a voice of reason and fairness. They will depend upon you for leadership and guidance. Your people will rely upon you to be their voice when they cannot speak for themselves. Now you know how much trust your people and I are putting in you in this ceremony."

"I do," Zahir answered hoarsely, glad that he had managed not to choke over the ritual words. After all, he had ruined enough in his life without botching up sacred ceremonies.

"Then I anoint you as my successor." The Voice dipped his fingers in a golden bowl full of fragrant, holy oil and traced his damp fingers first over Zahir's forehead and then his cheeks. "Turn away from evil and ignorance. Grow in wisdom and charity until the day you are ready to replace me as Voice."

Zahir was open to the wild magic that flowed through every Bazhir's veins no matter how much they tried to ignore it or deny its presence. He could feel the spirits of his ancestors flowing into him now, urging him to let them grow in him and him in them, asking whether he would risk hostile stares in order to behave righteously, and demanding whether he would use his new faith in them and in the gods to reshape his world. Aisha, Trevor, and his father were all speaking inside him, so that the chambers in his heart echoed with the voices of all those he had loved and lost.

Closing his eyes, he fought the urge to scream at them to leave him in peace because he didn't believe in any afterlife, but he couldn't say that after what had happened in Black City. Speaking with Trevor and Alhaz when they should have been out of his reach forever had made him wonder if there was a hope he had never really dreamed of living for. Falling into absolute darkness and then being rescued by those who should have been dead to him forever had taught him that supernatural arms that could catch him might always catch him by surprise. Digging deep inside himself to find the only weapons he could wield against the Ysandir had shown him that love was more than enough. He couldn't be deaf and blind anymore when he was expected to be the eyes and ears of his people.

"May you be a channel of the gods' peace, Zahir ibn Alhaz," the Voice intoned solemnly, and Zahir couldn't help but appreciate the irony of the fact that, in a few moments, the Voice would be presiding over a stoning after preaching about peace and love. "Where there is injury, may you bring their mercy. Where there is doubt, may you spread true faith in their will and love. Where there is sorrow, may you create joy and laughter. May you always seek first to understand rather than to be understood and to give of yourself rather than to receive."

"If it is the gods' will, let it be so." Zahir ducked his head, so that his oiled skin almost touched the sand, and the voices inside him, before finally departing from him as abruptly as they had come, assured him that it had always been the gods' will that he be loving, compassionate, just, and merciful.

"Arise, Servant of the Gods." With a firm hand, King Jonathan reached out and pulled Zahir to his feet. As soon as Zahir was standing, he found himself swept into a hug that felt distinctly awkward, because his knightmaster's ceremonial robes made it cumbersome for him to wrap his arms around anyone.

Before Zahir could recover from the unexpected, non-ritual hug enough to return it in a fashion that most likely would have been equally clumsy the king had released him. His face flushing, Zahir suddenly realized cheers and applause were resounding from the assembly.

His knees trembling because now that the ceremony of his humiliation was over, he wished that it could go on longer, so that Nasira's and Haashim's lives could last just a few moments more.

He could see the two holes—deep enough to bury him up to his shoulders if he stood in them—that had been dug for the stoning. He could see the mounds of rocks that had been gathered earlier by joking and laughing children.

Forgive those children, he told himself sternly, as he fell back through the crowd, trying to find a place so obscured by the mob that had already switched from praising him to mocking and spitting upon Haashim and Nasira, who were being dragged from the prison tent by hard-faced guards. They didn't know what they were doing. Gods help them, they were only doing as their parents told them and taught them to do.

That thought only made him feel sicker in his heart and in his stomach, so he pretended that he couldn't hear the jeers of the masses or see their twisted, rage-contorted features. He tried not to see the tears of the condemned, or hear their agonized wails blended with the bloodthirsty cries of the stone-hurling throng. He pretended not to see the sand redden with blood and the air fill with the terrible, terrifying sound of rock striking flesh and bone.

The venom in the shouts of the crowd made Zahir abruptly grateful that he had gone to Black City. Before he had gone there, he had been filled with hatred and a desire to avenge himself on Haashim, but now those filthy desires had been purged from his flesh and his blood. He had finally been so overwhelmed by the dark that all he ever wanted to do was shine some light into a bleak world. At Black City, he had fought his greatest enemy—himself—and, in some weird way, he had died to himself, so that now, not only was he no longer afraid of his own death, but he was far less eager to kill others. Black City had been a nightmare, but at least he had awoken from it a better man.

"Make it stop!" A sob torn from a broken spirit cut into Zahir's thoughts, and, for a moment, he wondered if the pained plea had been his own, but when he felt sweaty, small hands clutch onto his thighs, he looked down to see a little boy burying his head in Zahir's leg.

"Be quiet," snapped the man who appeared to be the boy's father. Shooting Zahir an apologetic glance, he added, "Pardon me, future Voice. I've been trying, with limited success, to cure him of his disgusting habit of sniveling at all public punishments."

"Let him come away with me," Zahir offered, scooping up the weeping child, balancing the boy on his hip, and wondering why throwing stones was always more socially acceptable than crying in sympathy at another's pain.

Indifferently, the man nodded and returned to hurling rocks and insults at the condemned.

Not at all sorry for an excuse to leave the brutal execution behind, Zahir carried the boy to the outskirts of the tents. Then, sitting them both down on a sun-warmed boulder, he asked the lad, who seemed to be around seven, "What's your name, son?"

"Mustafa ibn Najid," whispered the boy, taking a swipe at his running nose with his sleeve. "But my father probably wishes I wasn't 'ibn Najid.' He thinks I'm an embarrassment, not a son."

"Well," Zahir said dryly, pulling Mustafa's sleeve away from his nose, and then wiping the boy's trickling nose with his own handkerchief, "my father was never very proud of me either, if that makes you feel any better, scamp."

"But you're a hero!" protested Mustafa, gaping at Zahir. "You're going to be the next Voice. Any father would have to be proud of you!"

"In the end, I think my father was proud of me, and I think that I always knew he loved me even when he seemed to forget that he did." Gently, Zahir mussed Mustafa's hair. "One day, I think you'll feel the same about your father."

"That will be the same day the desert freezes over." Mustafa scuffed his shoe against the rock, ducking his head. "Thanks for comforting me, anyway. I needed somebody to cry on, and yours was the only face in the crowd that didn't look angry or as if you hated Haashim and Nasira. I didn't hate them, either. Neither of them ever laughed at me in a mean way like the girls in the tribe. Neither of them ever called me names like my father or the other boys in the tribe. They didn't beat up on me or get any pleasure like my father or the other boys in the tribe. They knew my name and called me by it like I was an adult. Haashim would pat me on the head when we met, and Nasira would slip treats into my pockets. My father used to support Haashim, but after what happened in Black city, he says that he never really agreed with Haashim and that Haashim and Nasira deserve to die."

Mustafa drew his tear-streaked cheeks against his curled-up knees and choked out, "Will I see Haashim and Nasira in paradise? Will it be the same if I do? Would I be able to recognize them even if I could see them? Would they still know my name if they saw me in paradise? Would the sweets taste the same? Would Haashim's touch feel the same? I can only imagine, but I can't imagine well enough to know, and I want to know so badly."

"All of us can only imagine, and none of us can know even though we all want to know so badly," said Zahir, lifting Mustafa's chin and wiping the tears from the boy's cheek. "But I imagine that in heaven there will be only happy tears, and all the pain that we have ever felt will be finally gone. I image that one day the gods will lavish their love on us simply because we are their creatures and they are our creators."

"That seems like an awful lot to hope for," Mustafa commented wryly, but no new tears replaced the old ones. 

"If we're imagining, we should think things as wonderful as _impossible_," remarked Zahir, smirking as he tapped the ridge of Mustafa's nose playfully.

Mustafa opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off when a musical voice called out, "There you are, Squire. I was wondering where you had disappeared to."

"I'd better go," Mustafa muttered, pushing off the boulder and racing back toward the tents. "My father will be looking for me, too."

As Mustafa left, King Jonathan sat down on the part of the rock the boy had just vacated.

"Is the blood-letting over, then?" Zahir demanded, not bothering to conceal his bitterness and scorn.

"The _executions_—"King Jonathan placed an unnecessary emphasis on the word—"are done, as you would know if you had stayed for them per my orders."

"I apologize for not sharing your taste in entertainment, sire." Zahir's lips twisted. "Next time, I'll try to remember that it's nobler, braver, and altogether more chivalrous in your eyes to throw stones at helpless people buried up to their shoulders in sand than to console a sobbing boy because his own father isn't about to do so."

"All I'm saying, Zahir, is, as Voice, you will need to give the command to execute people and watch the sentence carried out," King Jonathan informed him crisply. "When you are a leader, you can't afford to be squeamish about justice any more than a soldier on a battlefield can afford to love his enemy more than his own life."

"I used to throw stones at people." Zahir locked his eyes on his knightmaster's. "I used to hold the rocks in my hand, thinking they would protect me from harm. Now I know better, Your Majesty. Now I know we all have to put down out stones and stop throwing them if we don't all want to die in a bloody heap of rocks. Throwing stones is easy and cowardly, but putting them down is difficult and brave. Throwing stones might destroy us, but putting them down might save us all."

"You carry weapons, Squire," the king reminded him, "and you have killed people in fights."

"I'll kill only if it's the only way I can save innocents." Zahir's jaw clenched. "At last, I'm done with revenge, sire."

"Execution, for me, isn't about revenge," King Jonathan explained grimly. "It's about protecting the innocent. When people see others die for committing murder, they'll be much less likely to perpetuate that crime themselves, you see, and, thus, many innocent lives are spared by the death of one guilty man or woman."

"Your logic has more holes than mouse-bitten cheese, Your Majesty." Zahir snorted derisively. "People commit murder either because they are in a fit of rage or vengeance, in which their madness prevents them from considering the ramifications of their actions, or else because they get pleasure out of killing people, no matter what the consequences are. Execution isn't a deterrent to the temporarily insane, and people who enjoy killing only have their bloodthirsty fancies excited by witnessing or participating in stonings. As long as fathers force their sons to show up at maimings, whippings, and executions, and beat or verbally abuse them for not showing appropriate levels of vindictiveness, there will be Haashims in this desert—monsters that the Bazhir create for themselves. When I'm Voice, therefore, executions will stop in this desert."

"Executions have always been a part of Bazhir culture." King Jonathan studied him, cerulean eyes inscrutable. "I can't believe you want to change that."

"Progressives aren't the only ones who want to change the world for the better, sire." Zahir crossed his arms over his chest. "And at least what I want to change is a matter of life and death, unlike your precious little reforms about education and whatnot."

"The point of my education reforms was to get the next generation thinking and debating about what to change and what not to change," his knightmaster told him mildly. "If you're thinking and talking about executions like this, your education has been a success."

"No, it hasn't, Your Majesty," Zahir burst out, shaking his head. "Page training was rubbish. When I first arrived at the palace, everyone called me sand scut and names even more offensive than that. Nobody spoke to me except to taunt me or order me about. Everyone tried to push me around, and I spent every evening trying not to cry myself to sleep. I had to become a bully so their nasty comments would stay in their eyes instead of pouring out of their mouths like vomit. It was the same with Joren. He had to become a bully so people would stop calling him a weak pretty-boy. As for Garvey and Vinson, they're brutes because everybody always told them their strongest muscles would never be their brains or their hearts, but their fists. Your wonderful northern education produces just as many monsters as the Bazhir one does."

"No matter what you say about the pitfalls of your northern and Bazhir education, I'm not worried about you being the next Voice." King Jonathan smiled slightly. "I used to fear that you might be too prideful to serve your people, but now I see you would surrender everything you love for your people., and that is the very definition of humble selflessness."

"But how did you know that I should be the next Voice?" asked Zahir, thinking about Mustafa, because he did agree with the king that the only hope for the future was in the next generation somehow not only passing along the accumulated wisdom of the previous one, but also becoming more loving, more compassionate, and more merciful than humanity had ever been before. Darkness was always ready to close in on the world, and people could fight it only by burning more brightly and steadily until the night was compelled to turn into day. "How will I know who should be Voice after me?"

"When you need to, you will know who to choose and when, Zahir." King Jonathan squeezed his shoulder. "Don't concern yourself with that now. You'll have a long life, and a long tenure as Voice."

"You don't need to console me by telling me that I'll live a long time." Zahir gazed deeply into his knightmaster's sapphire eyes. "I'm not afraid of death, and I won't feel like I'm dying young when I've already seen Aisha and Trevor die and felt that pain like an old man. However long I live, though, I can promise that I will always testify to the love Trevor was always telling me about and that I only began to understand in Black city. I'll always try to be that hand that reaches out to offer mercy or peace, and I'll forever strive to be that silent courage and strength when words are not enough."


	69. Chapter 69

Author's Note: I apologize for the long delay between postings. I've been very busy with student-teaching and other obligations this semester, but I hope that I should be able to complete this story within the next couple of weeks, for the enjoyment of anyone who is still interested in reading about Zahir and his adventures.

Pawns and Keys

Back at the Royal Palace for Midwinter and his rapidly approaching Ordeal, Zahir leaned further into the window seat he was perched upon, watching his warm breath fog the frigid panes. If he misted the window enough, he wouldn't have to see the dark winter night, as black as the Chamber where Vinson was currently undergoing his Ordeal, because Zahir wasn't going to think about that at all on this long, cold night that was quieter than it should have been since the king and queen, tired of the grand celebrations of the progress, had decided to spend a private evening with their family in the parlor.

Honored with an invitation to this very exclusive gathering, should at least have cultivated the appearance that he was more interested in the people present than the snowflakes drifting down from the black sky onto the white blanket of cold covering the ground. Yet, he couldn't even bring himself to turn to face the conversation, nonetheless contribute even the most superficial comments to it.

It wasn't like Vinson and Zahir had seen much of one another since they had become squires. Even as pages, though they been friends according to the brutal politics and uneasy alliances of the pages' wing, there had always been a mutual contempt simmering beneath the surface of amiability. Vinson had curled his lips at Zahir's Bazhir ancestry; Zahir had sniggered at Vinson's stupidity. For all that, Zahir could still feel his stomach twist when he pictured Vinson, alone, shivering, trapped in his nightmares, and longing to scream but compelled by all the rules of ritual to remain silent even if it killed him. Some squires emerged from the Chamber with bloody knuckles and lips and tongues from too much gnawing to hold back tortured sobs or tormented yells. At that thought, Zahir had to bite his own lip to conceal its trembling.

He couldn't imagine the horrors Vinson was facing, but in a few short (and terribly long) nights, he would be going through his own vigil and Ordeal. Soon his strength would be tested. Soon he would enter the fire meant to either destroy himself or forge him into a knight of the realm.

As if to drag Zahir from his reverie, King Jonathan said, "Zahir."

Responding instantly to the sound of his name being uttered by the voice he associated most immediately with authority, Zahir spun around to see his knightmaster, seated in an upholstered armchair by the cackling fire, gazing at him with cerulean eyes that were soft with understanding.

"A game of chess?" asked the king, waving at a board on the table before him covered with elegantly carved chess pieces wrought from black and white marble probably imported at exorbitant expense from the Copper Isles.

A distraction, Zahir thought. How gracious of the king to offer it.

On legs that felt numb from being curled up too long, he walked over to the chessboard and settled into the chair across from his knightmaster. As the cushions swallowed him, he saw that the white pieces were arrayed for battle in front of him—his to command and make the first move with.

"You know, Your Majesty," Zahir observed, his eyes narrowing, "I don't trust a player who wants his opponent to move first."

"It suits my style to do so." His knightmaster chuckled. "Whenever you are ready, Squire."

Concentrating, Zahir frowned down at the board, trying to come up with a tactic that would carry him to victory. Everything he knew about his knightmaster told him that the man would be a long-term player, willing to make early sacrifices to ensure future gains, and lulling an enemy into a false sense of security before springing the trap, leaving the hapless foe choking on the bitterness defeat instead of enjoying the headiness of triumph.

Zahir's style was different. He was a warrior, not a commander. He fought the battles rather than designing them. He would have to being with a lightning attack and rely upon his quick wits and well-honed survival instincts to keep him from a shameful end, just as he would in a sword fight. He would have to play on his own terms, and not let his cunning opponent dictate all the conditions of battle. Taking a deep breath, he moved one of his pawns forward.

The king hesitated for a moment, and then slid a knight forward, leaving his line of pawns intact.

The game proceeded, and Zahir soon found himself paying more attention to his knightmaster's moves than to his own. He managed to work out a pattern quite quickly. King Jonathan created an open space around his king and used his higher pieces to almost…Zahir tried to wrap his mind around the difficult concept. The king almost seemed to be protecting his pawns.

Fearing a trap, but eager for victory, Zahir moved his castle to take his knightmaster's king. He was astonished at such a simple checkmate. It was almost as if King Jonathan wanted Zahir to capture his king. He studied the board before realizing that in a few more turns his knightmaster might have been able to take Zahir's king with his pawns, since most of Zahir's pieces were invested in taking his knightmaster's king.

"Are you quite familiar with the rules, Your Majesty?" Zahir arched an eyebrow at his knightmaster. "Pawns are supposed to be sacrificed to protect the king, not vice versa. It doesn't matter how many pawns die as long as the king is kept safe."

"Yes, Zahir." King Jonathan smiled, his eyes gleaming cryptically. "It's just that, at my age, even a game is seldom just that."

"You care about your pawns too much, sire." Zahir shook his head. "At least in chess you do."

"In chess, I can act as I wouldn't in real life." There was a bitter edge to the king's smile now.

"Me too, sire." Zahir gestured at the mountain of pawns he had allowed to be sacrificed to protect his own king and take his knightmaster's. "In real life, I would have defended the pawns, instead of abandoning them."

"A pawn is a piece of absolute potential." The king began to return Zahir's captured pawns to their original places on the board. "Once the pawn reaches the opposite end of the board, it can become any other piece."

"That's rare, though, Your Majesty," Zahir pointed out, as he helped reset the board. "Besides, the rules of the game are set up so that the pawns depend on their king. The pawns couldn't complete your amazing ambush once their king was taken."

"Ah, I think you'd be surprised at what a pawn can manage, even without its king." King Jonathan's eyes twinkled. "Or maybe you wouldn't be. You've managed quite a few spectacular feats without me hovering over your shoulder, and you come from a people that had no use for a king for centuries."

"And I see that we're no longer talking about chess, sire." Zahir's nose wrinkled. "You know, I was almost looking forward to a sound defeat at the hand of an expert."

"Oh, you've caught me several decades too late for that, Zahir." The king chuckled. "The last game of chess that I won was in my adolescence."

"Then why did you invite me to play, Your Majesty?" Zahir demanded, gaping.

"Two reasons. First, I was looking forward to a sound defeat at the hands of an expert." King Jonathan raised his glass of eggnog in a toast to Zahir, who could not resist a grin at the compliment.

"And second, sire?" he prompted.

"Secondly, I wanted to know if I still cared about the pawns." The king's eyes were grave now.

"Even at the expense of their king," whispered Zahir, thinking, with a pang that his knightmaster was the sort of king who was willing to sacrifice himself for his pawns, even if he did sometimes have to sacrifice a pawn to save a group of pawns. Feeling a rush of affection and loyalty for his ruler, he burst out, "I don't mind being your pawn, Your Majesty. I'm loyal to you not just out of duty, but also out of affection."

"I appreciate your fidelity, Zahir." King Jonathan's bright eyes locked on his squire's. "But I've always thought of you as more of a king—one who fights for his pawns instead of standing around expecting them to sacrifice themselves for him—than a pawn."

Not knowing how to respond to this, since he didn't want to be a king, Zahir rose, and, bowing, said, "I'll be going to bed, if you've no objection, sire. I want to get up early to see that Vinson survived his Ordeal."

"Go get some rest," his knightmaster agreed, and Zahir disappeared into his bedroom.

As he changed into his warmest nightclothes, he tried not to think about the thin clothes covering Vinson's damp frame in the cold chapel where he was undergoing his vigil and Ordeal. Blowing out his candle and burrowing beneath his blankets, Zahir refused to imagine how his friend must be shivering in the dark tonight. When he closed his eyes, he kept at bay visions of the nightmares Vinson must be living. Even so, he slept fitfully, almost rolling of his mattress several times, and he awoke when the first streams of pre-dawn light streaked through his curtains into his bedchamber.

Quickly, his heart pounding with pictures of a battered Vinson stumbling out of the Chamber of Ordeal, Zahir dressed and hurried down to the chapel devoted to Mithros, where Vinson's knightmaster and parents were already assembled, trying to conceal their anxiety by speaking to each other in voices that were too loud for such a sacred place.

Wanting something steady to support him in case Vinson emerged from the Chamber looking like a wounded soldier, Zahir leaned against the stone wall of the chapel and folded his hands together, not praying, but rather keeping them from trembling by sealing them in an iron grip.

He had been standing in this posture for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few minutes when King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, immaculate as they always were for public appearances whether at the crack of dawn or the stroke of midnight, entered the chapel. After another couple of minutes that lasted an eon, the door to the Chamber opened, and Vinson burst out of it as though he had been hurled by a catapult. A river of tears flowed down his cheeks, and his voice was hoarse with a hundred sorrows when he called in a broken voice, his eyes fixed on the sun disk that represented Mithros as if it were the only thing in the room that had any meaning, "I request an audience with the king and the Lord Magistrate. I-I must confess."

The room was drowned in a flood of whispers and gasps, because everyone in the crowd knew that it was bed news and quite a scandal for gossips the realm over when a squire emerged from the Chamber, requesting an audience. Nothing good was ever said at those audiences.

"Appear in the Great Throne Room in a bell's time," King Jonathan announced formally. "You shall have your audience then, Vinson of Genlith. Prepare yourself."

With that, the king and queen left the chapel, and the silence that had briefly filled the sacred place when King Jonathan's firm tone echoed through it was replaced by renewed speculation about Vinson's guilty conscience. Zahir wanted to ask Vinson what was he had done that was so horrible it needed to be confessed before a king and a magistrate, but, before he could reach his friend, Vinson, who looked as dazed as a fish out of water, was pulled out of the chapel by his parents and his knightmaster, who were all wearing the nervous looks of people trying too hard to conceal their fear with pride.

Deciding that he could speak with Vinson later, Zahir left the chapel and hurried to catch up with the king and queen, who were already turning onto the next corridor when he reached them.

"Am I allowed to attend Vinson's audience, sire?" he asked, not knowing what, beyond hearing more words that would make his heart sink into his stomach, he hoped to gain by being present at such a miserable affair.

"It's a public, not private audience, so you may come if you wish to do so," his knightmaster answered, shooting him a pointed glance. "However, I would prefer to not see you distracted. You should be focused on preparing for your own Ordeal, Squire."

"Doing what, Your Majesty?" Zahir snorted. "Clearing all the skeletons from my closet?"

"Not getting involved in the troubles of a friend who isn't a good influence upon you." King Jonathan's lips thinned. "Not dragging your name through the same mud that his will be soaked in, I don't doubt. Not bringing your integrity into question by associating with someone whose morality is questionable at best."

"If I fail my Ordeal, it will because of who I am, not because of who Vinson is, sire." Zahir's jaw tightened. "If I fail my Ordeal, it will be because I'm a rotten person, not because I'm trying too late to be a good friend to Vinson."

"I'm not worried about you passing your Ordeal," replied King Jonathan dryly. "I'm concerned about what people will say about you if you associate yourself too much with Vinson."

"Don't worry, Your Majesty." Zahir lifted his chin defiantly. "As it is, very few northerners like or trust a sand scut such as me. That means I don't have to bend over backwards to try to please them."

"Zahir." The king exhaled gustily. "I don't know why you bothered to ask me if you could go to the audience if you aren't going to listen to my answer. Why not save both of us some breath?"

"I had to discover whether it was a public or private audience, sire," explained Zahir, shrugging. "Among the Bazhir, all important audiences are held before the tribal fire, and everyone listens to the proceedings, but, in the north, only some audiences are open to the public, and people are still discouraged from attending those, because, apparently, it might hurt their reputations to seem too interested in how justice in the realm is carried out."

"Things are different in the north than in the desert, yes," King Jonathan agreed tersely.

"I know that, Your Majesty." Zahir crossed his arms over his chest. "Everybody in the north always tells me that. They always use a tone that suggests that things are _better _in the north, and I should just accept that when I'm in the north, because they have no intention of conforming to Bazhir customs, even when visiting the desert, and would like to replace all the Bazhir traditions in the desert with northern ones."

"Now you're just being ridiculous, and inferring things I never implied." The king's eyes blazed. "I'm Bazhir and northerner. I think I can be trusted to treat both cultures with respect."

"Of course, sire." Zahir bowed. "All the same, I'll just be satisfying my savage ignorance by observing superior, civilized northern justice at the audience."

"Very well," King Jonathan responded tightly. "I hope you have an educational experience."

Less than an hour later, Zahir was standing in the Great Throne Room, which was packed with nobles with purple splotches under their eyes and slightly mussed hair. With this crowd, he thought it had been foolish for the king to worry about anyone noticing or remarking upon his presence. Maybe his knightmaster hadn't predicted how popular this event would be, or else he didn't want Zahir to have to hear whatever Vinson was going to say firsthand (as if Zahir would rather learn the dubious grapevine account of what was said in the audience).

Before Zahir could speculate further on this or reach any conclusion, the door behind the dais swung open, and King Jonathan, Queen Thayet, Prince Roald, and Princess Kalasin entered. Once the king and queen had been seated in the thrones with their oldest children on either side, Lord Turomot took a place one step down from the thrones and nodded to the herald at the door, who announced, "Vinson of Genlith, squire and—"

Abruptly, the astonished herald lapsed into a silence that was copied throughout the room as Vinson lurched forward, still wearing the clothes from his vigil, though he had been given time to change. There were rusty marks on his shoulders, and Zahir decided he didn't want to think about what had made the other young man's shoulders bleed. Bruises—which Zahir could easily recognize as a sign of a beating, after being on the receiving end of so many from his father—covered Vinson's face and hands.

Even more horrifying, new bruises seemed to be appearing from blows dealt by an invisible hand, as Vinson made his way toward the dais. Zahir flinched along with Vinson as every new mark hit an already battered body.

"I have a confession," Vinson burst out, his voice cracked, as if it had been broken forever by screams of agony, terror, and guilt. "I must—confess. I confess."

Vinson shuddered, and Zahir joined him, wishing not only that he wasn't here to see his friend tormented by whatever punishment the Chamber had devised for Vinson's crimes, but also that none of them were here, and that Vinson had never done anything to make the Chamber punish him in the first place. However, he supposed that was a foolish wish. Everyone's hands were marked with blood, and nobody was innocent. The Chamber, if bent on doing justice, had a reason to punish all who entered it—to beat every person to a bloody pulp for daring to step into it with hearts tainted by violence and cruelty.

"Two years ago, there—there was trouble in the Lower City. Two—two slum wrenches, no better than—No!" Vinson howled, raising an arm to fend off an invisible, punishing blow. "No! I meant two girls of the Lower City were attacked, beaten."

Unbidden, an image of Aisha, bloody, bruised, and tied like a sacrifice to some unmerciful deity to an altar in Black City, rose in Zahir's mind. He was nearly blinded by rage when he realized that Vinson had done the same thing that Haashim had to somebody else's sister or daughter. He wanted to charge forward and spit all his contempt into Vinson's face for being a menace, rather than a protection, to the realm's women, but, before he could take a single step, he felt himself choking on his own contempt. He had threatened Aisha and hit Myra. In the eyes of the gods, he had to be at least as guilty as Vinson. When he condemned Vinson, even in his mind, he must seem like a hypocritical raven accusing the blackbird of flying around with too dark feathers.

"A third was—must I say it?"Another invisible blow seemed to make it clear that Vinson had to say it, for he continued in a tormented voice, "A third was beaten and raped. I did it. Sir Nualt had no knowledge. None. He'd have denounced me if he'd known. I didn't—the women made me angry. They're teases, leading a man—"

Zahir felt sick. The only way Vinson had ever been taught to express his grievances with others was with force—with his fists. In the pages' wing, all his disagreements ended in brawls that were never punished severely enough to be truly discouraged, and, all morning, on the practice courts, they were taught how to injure, to maim, and to kill. Rage and aggression had been poured into them all since childhood, and the only way they were taught to channel that rage and aggression was through acts of violence and domination. Then, if they happened to act violently or domineeringly against the wrong person at the wrong time, they were judged harshly as vile brutes, not as young men who had never been shown a better way to solve conflicts. People liked to blame sons trained to be the realm's swords if those blades cut down a friend. They liked to pretend that they had not sharpened those swords themselves. Rape was disgusting and evil, but it was what happened in a world as disordered as theirs, where men were taught to win at any cost and women to be agreeable no matter what, and they were somehow supposed to find peace and love together when they couldn't even begin to understand one another.

He wished that he could find the strength to avert his eyes from the awful sight of Vinson collapsing to the floor in a fit of uncontrollable, wrenching sobs. He wanted to scream at the Chamber to stop torturing a repentant young man as he saw a cut on Vinson's scalp.

King Jonathan extended a palm toward Vinson, and the azure flame of his Gift settled over Vinson's weeping form. For a second, it blazed fiercely white, and then vanished. "He tells the truth," the king announced grimly, and Zahir could tell from his tone that he would unleash the full weight of the realm's justice against Vinson. The king would blame the young man, but never think about blaming the whole culture that had created him. The king would reform a thousand things in the realm and still not touch the heart of its rottenness—the violence being taught to little boys and now little girls, too, as soon as they could walk and talk.

"Tell the Chamber I confessed," begged Vinson, lifting his face to gaze desperately up at the monarchs. "Tell it I did what it wanted me to do. Make it let me go! Make it stop hurting me!"

Zahir closed his eyes, trying not to think that the girls Vinson had beaten and raped had probably made similar pleas. And Aisha—had she called out like that before she had been killed?

"The Chamber is commanded by no one, Vinson of Genlith," answered the queen in her hardest voice, and Zahir knew that she didn't understand that no about of vengeance on a repentant criminal would ever heal his victims. She didn't understand, either, that, when a guilty man called out for mercy, all he wanted to hear was that his crimes, however appalling, had been forgiven, and they could have a chance to atone by living better in the future. "It will release you as it chooses."

Duke Turomot, looking as ancient as justice, came forward, the brass of his walking stick rapping sharply on the stone floor. "Guards! Arrest this man on the charges of rape and assault. Take him to the provost. I want a confession in full."

Turning to Vinson's family, he added, "Send your advocate. You may visit him once his confession is witnessed."

The family made obeisance, and then hurried out after the sentries who had escorted Vinson away. After that, the audience concluded with the king, queen, and their older children processing out through the door they had entered, and everyone else leaving in a throng filled with gossip about what Vinson had done and how everybody had always suspected that he would come to a bad end.

Revolted by the human capacity to turn tragedy into an opportunity for gossip rather than compassion, Zahir broke free of the crowd and hastened back to his room. With every step, he thought how his life had changed in the twenty minutes since Vinson's audience had started. In twenty minutes, though it didn't seem like a long time, you could do a lot. You could sharpen and polish a sword. You could dress yourself in armor. You could kill or be killed. You could stop the world, or you could just jump off it. You could get justice, or you could show mercy.

Once he returned to his room, Zahir sank into his desk chair and clutched his temples, as if that would somehow help him organize his roiling thoughts. He had to see and speak to Vinson as soon as possible, but he couldn't ask his knightmaster for permission. If King Jonathan objected to Zahir attending Vinson's public audience, he would never approve of Zahir visiting a rapist in prison. He would want Zahir to act as if he had never known Vinson at all. He would want Zahir to pretend that hours studying and fighting together during the rockiest years of adolescence amounted to nothing. He would want Zahir to act as though one terrible crime suddenly rendered all those shared jokes and secrets void. He would want Zahir to forget that a friend was most needed after the entire world had rejected you.

Zahir wasn't about to do any such thing, but the question was how was he to go about doing what he wanted to do. He would have to wait at least half an hour for Vinson's full confession to be recorded. Then he would have to wait another twenty minutes until after Vinson's family was done visiting him. Zahir didn't think Vinson's family would stay with him long, not after he had disgraced the family name. He knew that Vinson's parents would have been hoping, since the day he was born that he would become a brave hero of a knight, not that he would be a failed squire. They would have imagined him as admired by the world, not reviled by it as a freak of a rapist. They would hardly be able to look at the son who had ruined the dreams they had for his future.

Zahir pinched the bridge of his nose and bullied himself into focusing on the task at hand. He knew that the king had a ring of keys to the rooms where noble prisoners were kept in his night table drawer. As the king's squire, he would not be questioned if he entered King Jonathan's bedroom, and, once he had the keys, nobody would be suspicious if he used them. He would just be a squire on an errand, a squire whose rebellion was concealed under the guise of conformity. He could, if he timed everything properly, sneak into Vinson's room just as the guards were escorting Vinson's family out of the wing where noble prisoners were kept.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself out of his chair and left his room. Glad that there were only a few servants around, polishing furniture and sweeping carpets, he stepped into the king's room. Quickly, he looked around and gave a slight, triumphant grin when he saw that the chamber was empty. Moving as swiftly and as silently as the slyest of cats, he crossed over to the night table, slid open its drawer, and grabbed the key ring.

The instant his hand closed around the key ring, he felt a searing sensation in his palm that immediately caused him to drop the keys. Tears welling in his eyes, he struggled not to curse or cry out in pain, because that would only make someone come running and realize that he was up to no good. Thinking that this was just like when he was a child and had to pretend that he felt no pain when he touched a hot pan so that his mother wouldn't notice his misbehavior and slap his wrist, he looked at his palm, wanting to see if the damage was as real as the agony, and wished that he hadn't. A crimson welt, in the exact shape of the key ring, burned in his palm, and the urge to scream built in his lungs. He didn't know whether he should try to rub away the mark of his guilt, or whether he should assume it would scar him forever.

"Your hand, Squire," said King Jonathan calmly, stepping out of his closet, and causing Zahir to nearly swallow his tongue in shock and fright. As his knightmaster approached him, hand outstretched to take his, Zahir tried to hide his burned hand behind his back.

"Your hand, Zahir," the king repeated with just a hint of ice in his voice.

Deciding that the situation he was in could only get worse if he insisted on defying his knightmaster, Zahir held out his marked hand, praying to any listening and sympathetic deity that the king would become temporarily near-sighted, thus missing the obvious, blazing sign of Zahir's guilt.

"I didn't see you, sire," he muttered, as he placed his hand, palm upward, in his knightmaster's.

"You should always act the same, whether you can see me or not," King Jonathan educated him sternly. "Zahir, you should know that the ring of keys you picked up is spelled so that anyone who is not me who touches them without my permission will be branded with the mark of the keys until I can catch him. I seem to have caught you red-handed."

"Just cut it off, sire," Zahir hissed through gritted teeth. He knew that the penalty for theft—or attempted theft—among the Bazhir was to lose the offending limb. Maybe some of the pain would even go away once the hand was chopped off. "Stop me from stealing with it ever again."

"If I cut off your sword arm, you won't be able to fight for me ever again. Keep your hand but never attempt to steal from anyone—especially me—again, or I will not be so merciful." Cooling, healing magic was streaming from the king's fingers into Zahir's burned palm, erasing the guilty crimson mark of the keys, so that it was as if Zahir's flesh had never made contact with the metal that had branded him as a thief. "For now, it is enough for you to know that the bond between us was sufficient for me to sense your treachery and put an end to it. Now, I would like to know why you wanted to steal my keys."

"I had to see Vinson, Your Majesty." Zahir tried to blink away the tears welling in his eyes, and, instead, to his shame, found them streaming down his cheeks. "I had to let him know that, even though he's a rapist, I don't hate him. I needed to tell him that someone still remembers him as the boy he was, and, as long as somebody still remembers that boy, that boy isn't really dead and can live again."

"You would steal from your king in order to visit a rapist in prison?" King Jonathan shook his head. "I don't know what to make of your ethics, Squire."

"You have many people to serve you faithfully." Zahir ducked his head. "And Vinson might have nobody but me. And I was going to return the keys as soon as I was finished with them."

"I see." Sighing, the king lifted Zahir's chin. "Look at me, and listen to me closely, Zahir. I know that you put a high priority on mercy, and that you think that I am not merciful enough, but you must understand that mercy and justice are flip sides of the same coin. If I show mercy to a villain, I will not be giving justice to his victim, and, thus, I am, to the victim, not being merciful. I will not sit around excusing what a criminal did because of something that happened during his childhood, because plenty of people—like you—have horrible childhoods and go on to become heroes. I will acknowledge that assaulting people or raping them or killing them just because they are people and the criminal feels like it is a crime against humanity as a whole. I will lock them up for as long as I can to keep the rest of society safe from such people. I value sincere repentance and a true desire to reform one's life, but very few people experience that genuine repentance and desire to reform themselves. You think that because you would never apologize for a crime with every intent of repeating it as soon as possible that nobody would, but some beings to that, and they even turn mercy into a weapon against victims. They imply that if the victim is somehow unable to forgive them because they are not truly repentant, then the victim has somehow become the criminal, and the criminal has now become the injured party because of the victim's righteous refusal to pardon him. I only forgive you, a thief, and release you onto the world again because I believe that you will not attempt to steal again."

"I wasn't going to free Vinson," Zahir pointed out softly. "I was just going to visit him."

"I will take you to see Vinson." King Jonathan squeezed Zahir's shoulder in a gesture that managed to be both a reassurance and a reprimand. "But next time you need something from me, you will ask for it and not attempt to steal it. Understood?"

"Yes, sire," whispered Zahir, nodding his head seriously, and hardly daring to speak too loud for fear it would somehow destroy his good fortune. The moment he had been caught literally red-handed with the outline of the key ring branded into his right palm, he had not dared to hope that he would be allowed to see Vinson again. He hadn't even thought he would see his hand attached to his arm again.


	70. Chapter 70

Prisons

Far sooner than Zahir would have believed possible, he was being admitted by a surly guard into Vinson's prison, which bore a disconcerting resemblance to the room Joren had been locked in when he was charged with organizing the kidnapping of Mindelan's maid.

Swallowing hard, Zahir stepped into the chamber, trying to keep at bay unpleasant memories of how ineffective his visit with Joren had been, and, striving to ignore the equally disagreeable tightening in his stomach when the heavy door was firmly closed by the sentry. In every way that mattered, it felt like Vinson's prison had become Zahir's, and it was this claustrophobic sensation of being trapped that put a shrill edge to his voice when he asked, "How are you holding up, Vinson?"

"I've had better days." Vinson grimaced as another bruise blossomed on his face. "Better weeks. Better years even."

"Before you became a rapist?" Zahir couldn't stop the insensitive, judgmental question from bursting out of his mouth when he remembered his beautiful sister lying broken and bloody, her fiery personality extinguished on a cold stone altar.

"Before I became a rapist." Vinson closed his eyes, as if remembering the terrible suffering he had inflicted upon others, and then opening them as though the pain was too unbearable to think about. Another cut appeared on his lip as he went on hoarsely, "Before I saw my father rape a servant girl—before I heard the wench's screams and thought that was how it should be when that's the last thing it's supposed to be like. Before I saw him beat my mother and figured that was what strong men are supposed to do to women."

"At least my father only beat me." Zahir felt like he was choking on his rage at a world in which wives were abused rather than loved by their husbands, children were beaten rather than protected by their fathers, and servants had to fear their master rather than look to them for defense and support. "He never would have hurt my mother—especially not in front of me—and he would never have raped anyone."

"I don't blame my father for what I saw." Vinson shook his head dully as another throbbing bruise formed on his right cheek. "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time—just like the girls I assaulted were—and I saw things I should never have had to see, but if I had been stronger, wiser, and just plain _better _I would not have imitated what I saw. From seeing the pain my father caused my mother and the serving wench, I would have learned to show tenderness to women."

"But now that you know better you can do better," Zahir said, reaching out to gently squeeze one of the few undamaged patches of flesh on Vinson's arm. "You can start treating women with respect, instead of contempt. You can start protecting them, instead of hurting them. It's hard—I'm still learning how to do it—but it's worth doing. It's how you find redemption, and I think that's what you're seeking."

"Redemption isn't an option for me, Zahir." Tears seeped from between Vinson's blackened eyelids, and his voice was barely more than a whisper when it emerged from his bloodied, fat lips. "I'm not like you, get it? I've gone too far down the path of darkness to ever find the light again. I'm a rapist, curse it and curse me!"

"You don't need to find the light, Vinson." Zahir placed his handkerchief in his friend's cut hand. "In the midst of your darkness, the light will find you, and you will just have to follow it when it does."

"All the light in my world has gone out." Vinson twisted the handkerchief between his fingers, as if he had lost any desire to wipe away his tears or his blood with it. "And I would have no strength to follow it even if it could find me in the darkness I've created for myself. But what am I talking to you for when you'd never understand?"

"Never understand, would I?" demanded Zahir coldly, deciding that he would try the angry tone if the gentle one wasn't working with Vinson. "That's funny. I've been in a place where even the memory of light had died long ago, but you think you can tell me about the dark. I've murdered my uncle in cold blood and felt pride—rather than shame—at the action, yet you want to teach me about the depths of evil people can sink to as if I haven't taken the moral low ground often enough myself. Well, let me tell you, I've killed a family member, committed violence against women, hated my enemies, and sought vengeance upon them, but I've been truly sorry for doing those things. The question is: can you be truly sorry for your crimes?"

"Being sorry won't save me." Vinson howled and threw the handkerchief at the nearest wall. "If the gods have mercy upon me, they won't be showing mercy to the girls I assaulted and they won't be showing me the justice I deserve either. The torture the Ordeal is putting me through now is meant to prepare me for the eternal torment I'll suffer once I die."

"The pain is meant to get you to repent and reform yourself so you may be spared an eternity in misery," Zahir insisted, eyeing Vinson sternly. "I've been branded as a thief and seen the marks vanish as if they'd never been there, so I know it's possible for all the signs of guilt to fade away. I also believe that the gods will be able to combine justice and mercy better than any human could. They'll be able to give justice to victims, and mercy to criminals, and there will be no room for contradiction or complaint."

"Maybe there's still a hope for my forgiveness." Vinson bit his lip, and a spurt of blood streamed out of the broken skin. "When I get a chance, I'll put in an anonymous order of dresses at that Lalasa girl's new shop and have them delivered to one of the convents that takes in battered women."

"Those clothes will make a beautiful donation." Zahir smiled.

"Thanks for coming to see me." Vinson's face shifted into the slightest of grins. "You know, it's funny that my father always said never to trust a sand scut, but you're the best friend I've got. The only one who visited me in prison. The only one who turned my despair into hope. Good luck in your Ordeal. Don't be afraid of the dark."

"I won't be," Zahir assured him, rising to leave. As he knocked on the door to summon the guard with the agreed upon signal, he added, "I know that souls that burn brightly enough have nothing to fear even from the dark's greatest weapon—death."

As the sentry opened the door to allow him to exit, Zahir thought that he had a soul like that, just like Aisha and Trevor had. When he stepped into the corridor, he found King Jonathan eyeing him questioningly.

"I feel fine, sire," Zahir answered before his knightmaster could ask, as the king guided him down the hallway, away from Vinson's prison. "He's just so broken and bruised and battered—so like a victim, not a criminal—that I can't be mad at him, because he's so pitiful. You'd think a rapist would be revolting to look at, because of what he has done, but I'm a murderer, so I'd just be saying that my own trash doesn't stink if I felt that way."

"I feel pity for victims and penitents, not unabashed criminals," replied King Jonathan crisply. "That usually takes up all the time I can devote to feeling sorry for anyone."

"Vinson is repentant," Zahir pointed out stubbornly, determined to show that a visit to a criminal in prison should never be counted as a hopeless waste of time until it was over. "He's going to do something of his own free will to try to atone for what he's done, Your Majesty, and that's all anybody can ask of a penitent person."

"What's he going to do?" The king arched an eyebrow.

"I'm not going to tell you, sire." Haughtily, Zahir lifted his nose in the air. "He wishes his charity to remain anonymous, just as I would if I were in his place. A good deed isn't so noble if you're hoping to be placed on a pedestal or released from prison because of it."

If you were trying, in your own small and frail way, to be a light in a black, bleak world, Zahir thought, you didn't need to advertize the fact that you were shining the way a merchant would hawk his wares. The people in the darkness would notice your brightness without you needing to point it out. Then, afraid of your brightness, they would try to put you out, and, when they were burned, they would either recoil or allow themselves to be consumed by the fire, realizing at last that the light was a more merciful and glorious master than the dark.

"He can't hope for clemency in court if there isn't a record of deeds that indicate grief over his severe offense," King Jonathan remarked, folding his fingers together as though Vinson's case were being debated in could with top royal advisors.

"I think he's more concerned with the rulings of a higher court even than yours, Your Majesty," Zahir explained, locking his gaze on his knightmaster's. "As I said earlier, I'm not worried about freeing Vinson's body from prison. I'm concerned with freeing his soul from eternal guilt and torment. I've lost enough friends to know that you can't hope to save a friend's body, but you can save the only part of them that lasts—their soul."

Remembering Joren's obstinate refusal to repent when he had been charged with kidnapping Mindelan's maid, Zahir went on, swallowing his pain, "At least you can try to do that. Sometimes you can't."

"Well, I don't have to worry about your soul too much, at least." The king patted Zahir's shoulder. "That's a comfort."

"But I have to worry about Joren's." Biting his lip, Zahir acknowledged aloud the fear that had been hovering in the back of his mind ever since the broken and bruised Vinson stumbled out of the Chamber of Ordeal this morning. As he rubbed his head, Zahir muttered, "Oh, the things he's done and hasn't regretted."

Zahir's fear over Joren's Ordeal remained with him until he climbed into his bed that evening. When he closed his eyes, pulled his blankets up to his chin, and tried to drift into dreamland, he wasn't at all surprised that sleep took a long time to fall upon him, and, when it did, it was in a series of nightmares that only increased, rather than alleviated, his fears. He dreamed of Joren in the Chamber, blood streaming from raw, red cuts across his face, back, and shoulders. He dreamed that Joren was calling out his name and, through the haze of the nightmare, he somehow still knew that he was supposed to have been the one to pull Joren from the point of no returning. He dreamed that Joren was dying—suffering until the bitter end, and nobody was there to hear his last screams and comfort him through his final sobs.

In the end, Zahir found himself waking up to call out Joren's name in a voice that sounded broken in the pre-dawn light filling his bedchamber. Telling himself that the reality of what Joren had endured in the Chamber had to be better than the nightmare Zahir's mind had constructed for him, he wiped the sweat from his forehead, pushed himself out of bed, and threw on a shirt and breeches. Then, he hurried through the palace corridors down to the chapel where Joren would be emerging from the Chamber of Ordeal in a few moments.

When he entered the chapel, he saw Sir Jerel, Joren's parents, and Joren's siblings clustered near the altar, clearly gathering strength from one another's proximity as they awaited Joren's exit from the Chamber. Scattered throughout the pews or leaning against the walls were an assortment of Zahir's year-mates and a smattering of courtiers anxious to see if Vinson's difficulty in passing the Ordeal would be repeated this morning.

After several tense moments in which Zahir's breathing and heartbeat seemed too loud for this hushed setting, the Chamber opened. The silence deepened as everyone waited for the sound of Joren's footsteps leaving the Chamber. When the expectant quiet continued for another moment that lasted an eon, everyone's eyes fell in unison upon a pale figure in white robes spread-eagled on the Chamber's stone floor.

"Has my boy fainted?" shrieked Joren's mother, rushing forward as fast her gown, which rustled loudly in protest of her quick movements, would allow. Kneeling beside her oldest son, she placed her hand on his forehead. A second later, she wailed to Joren's father, "It's so cold, my lord. So cold."

Suddenly feeling very cold himself, because a forehead that wasn't warm was never a good omen, Zahir shuddered, feeling as if the blood beating in his veins had been replaced with ice that carried a chill throughout his body instead of heat. Perhaps a similar thing had happened to Joren's father, because he did not step forward to soothe his panicking wife, leaving her to gasp, as she clutched desperately at her oldest child's wrists, "There's no pulse, Burchard! No heartbeat! What are we going to do? What are we going to do?"

Lord Burchard returned to life with a vengeance, snapping, "It's that bitch's fault. We'll make her pay. That's what we're going to do."

With that, Burchard fled from the chapel, muttering curses under his breath. His wife, twisting a handkerchief nervously between her fingers, ran out after him accompanied by a man with a shock of blonde hair the same as Joren's. The crowd in the chapel parted to let the distraught trio pass, and Zahir could tell by the smug expressions worn by many of the nobles that they were thinking that, even if their family names weren't as old as the Stone Mountain one, at least nobody in their family history had scandalized their family name as well as Joren's failure had sullied the Stone Mountain one.

Swallowing hard, Zahir fixed his gaze instead upon Joren's sisters and brothers, who had managed to carry Joren's body over to a pew and were now shedding tears over their departed eldest sibling. People that young should never have been left alone to grieve their sibling, Zahir thought, and, before his mind knew what his legs were doing, he walked over to the mourning mass, wondering why Sir Jeral was standing by passively—not grieving over Joren's body or attempting to console Joren's brothers and sisters. Then again, he supposed part of the reason that Joren was lying dead on a pew now was because Sir Jeral never involved himself in any conflict or painful situation.

"I'm sorry," Zahir said when he reached the small group of mourners, not sure whether he was addressing them or Joren. Clutching the wood of the pew for support, he continued shakily, "Joren saved my life once, but I couldn't save him. I just let him slip away until now—when he is totally gone."

"Thank you for your condolences," responded the taller of Joren's sisters, her voice wavering. Her lips stretched into a weak approximation of the polite smile ladies were supposed to wear when introducing themselves, and she added, "I'm Muirne. You must be Zahir ibn Alhaz. Joren told me so much about you—all of it good, of course—and it's a pleasure to meet you. I only wish it had been under less grim circumstances."

"As do I." Zahir bowed his head and found himself staring into Joren's lifeless blue eyes. The fact that, even in death, they were still the color of a cloudless spring day made him choke.

For four of the most formative years of his life, Joren had been his best friend. The one who nudged him in the ribs to keep him from laughing or smirking when Lord Wyldon said something unintentionally funny in the midst of an infamous training master lecture. The one who whispered in his ear during the services that pages were required to attend every Sunday morning that, if Mithros was worth hanging out with, he would be sleeping or playing a game on a Sunday morning, not listening to responsive readings and interminable prayer recitations. The one who could always make a crude joke about their reading assignments. The one who had always fought at Zahir's back or side throughout the battles that waged in the hallways of the pages' wing. The one who was as graceful as him on the practice court. The one whose bright blonde hair and pale skin had contrasted so powerfully against Zahir's dark hair and skin, so that, when they stood next to each other, they emphasized one another's handsomeness, and looked like the soft light of midday and the black beauty of midnight. The one who had looked like his other half or his alter ego. The one who was now making Zahir wonder, just as he had after Trevor and Aisha had died, whether another part of him had died with Joren, and how many more deaths he would be able to survive before his broken heart stopped beating in protest.

_Oh, Joren_, he thought, as he gazed into the forever expressionless eyes whose every feeling he had once been able to read before secrets and shadows had fallen between them, creating and widening breaches during their tumultuous squire years. _If I had known that your Ordeal would end like this, I would never have abandoned you after your trial for abducting Mindelan's maid. I would never have walked out of that prison you were in when you had told me that you were so proud of kidnapping that poor young lady. If I only knew then what I now, I would have made sure that you knew what you did was wrong. I would have thanked you for saving my life. I would have forgiven all your mistakes. Now, I can only hope that, wherever you are, you understand what you have done wrong and are sorry for your crimes. Now, I can only be sorry for blaming you when I couldn't make you see the truth. Now that you're silent forever, there's nothing I wouldn't do to hear your arrogant voice arguing with me again. Now that there's no ice or fire left in your gaze, I just want one more chance to look into your eyes and see you looking back at me. It's so hard to say a final good-bye on these bitter terms, but maybe you are looking down on me, and perhaps you are even proud of who I am if you realized how mistaken you were about some things. _

_But, oh Joren, did you suffer at the end? Did it hurt you to know that there was no one around to hear your last cry? Or did you not make a cry at all, knowing that nobody would ever be able to hear it, anyway? Did you wonder if we would cry over your body, or did you think that nobody would really remember you at all? Did you die proud as ever, or did the Chamber banish all your old boasts, forcing you into a shameful surrender? Well, I guess that I'll never know. Not now that we'll never speak again. _

"Zahir." A hand was gripping his shoulder, and, returning to reality, Zahir turned his head to see King Jonathan, his face appropriately serious. Dimly, Zahir noticed that the chapel had emptied, except for Joren's siblings and Joren's empty body. "Let's get you back to your room."

Feeling too tired to even think about resisting such a suggestion, Zahir allowed himself to be escorted through the hallways back to his quarters. Dully, he muttered under his breath, "Maybe I'll be joining Joren soon. All of my friends are failing, and, after Garvey falls, the next one is going to be me."

"Don't talk like that." King Jonathan shook his head sternly. "You'll survive the Ordeal of Knighthood, and then you'll have the rite that will make you the next Voice to look forward to. I am confident that you have within you the strength and the courage to pass both trials. You are resilient enough not to be crushed by the darkness, but you are also flexible enough to accept that darkness exists. You know that you are not the center of the world, but you have a definite identity to which you remain true. You'll make a fine knight and Voice."

"Don't worry." Zahir permitted himself to be steered into his bedroom, feeling as lifeless as Joren. As he pondered whether a person had to be dead in order to be really classified as a ghost or if that part was only a technicality, he went on flatly, "I won't embarrass you too much, sire. I promise. I don't always succeed, but when I can't make a graceful landing, I normally manage a smooth fall, at least. I never went through a phase of adolescent ungainliness."

"I'm not afraid of you embarrassing me." King Jonathan rested his palm on Zahir's shoulder. "Once you've gotten some closure, you'll realize how silly what you're saying sounds."

"Closure?" snarled Zahir, jerking out of his knightmaster's grasp. His dark eyes blazing, he twisted his neck to glare at the king. "Do me a favor, Your Majesty, and never again use that word to describe some internal peace I need to find after someone I care about has died. An impersonal word like that makes it sound as if mourning a dead loved one is something to check off a list of chores along with polishing swords and folding laundry. It makes it sound as if losing someone you love—somebody who takes a piece of your heart with them into death—is something that you are just supposed to get over like misplacing a favorite shirt. I don't take anyone who babbles on about closure seriously, because it sounds like they have never suffered the heart-breaking, soul-crushing despair and shock of losing someone they care about, as I have."

"I think the Joren that you are mourning died a long time ago," King Jonathan observed quietly. "But I think that, as long as you remember that boy, he won't really be dead."

"That's easy for you to say." Not wanting to cry in front of a man who hadn't cared about Joren in any positive sense, Zahir angrily swiped away a stream of tears that were flowing down his cheeks with the cuff of his shirt. "You hated Joren. It isn't your heart that is breaking because he's no longer among the living."

"I didn't hate Joren." The king wrapped his arm around Zahir's shoulder again, and this time, Zahir was too tired—weary to the marrow of his bones—to struggle against this comforting grip. "As a ruler of this realm, I am a little too busy to waste large chunks of my time loathing teenage boys, and, besides, I like to think that I've attained a higher degree of emotional maturity than that."

"So, you don't even hate me, your obstinate squire?" Zahir asked, his lips quirking. He hoped that Joren wouldn't mind him smiling like this, but, somehow, when he thought about all the jokes and laughs he and Joren had exchanged over the years, he felt like he would only be doing Joren proud if he smiled or even laughed out loud. Tears could be left for an older generation—Joren's parents and knightmaster. Laughter was for the still young at heart like Zahir. Turning his pain into laughter would help him continue to fight the battle of his life, just as it always had. "Because sometimes it seems like our relationship is just one long argument, you know, sire."

"Oh, believe me I know, Squire." King Jonathan chuckled wryly. "By now, I think that I'm quite familiar with all your disagreeable attributes, but I still don't hate you." With a ginger squeeze of Zahir's shoulder, he added, "I just sometimes wish that you would stop fighting the hands that are trying to hold you, but I suppose it's not in your nature to give up that struggle, is it?"

"No, it's not, Your Majesty," agreed Zahir, pulling out of his knightmaster's grip more on principle than for any other reason. "Just think, if you were a wise king, you could've had your very agreeable son for a squire, instead, but you just had to be all unconventional."

"Come now, you know as well as I do that the Bazhir needed a new Voice, and Lord Imrah deserved a break after his last squire," the king reminded him dryly. "Ragnar of Pearlmouth had a lot of hard edges that needed polishing before he could become a real gemstone."

Snickering, Zahir thought that the Crown Prince, who never disobeyed back to authority figures and who was never caught disagreeing with anyone, would be a joy for Lord Imrah to work with after Ragnar of Pearlmouth, a young man four years older than Zahir, who had been talented but had mostly been renowned for his knack at arguing at length with anybody about any topic.

"I just can't believe that Lord Imrah could be bullied into taking on another squire after four years with Ragnar, sire." Zahir snorted.

"No bullying was involved, Zahir. Just my royal charm." King Jonathan gave the dazzling beam that showed all his white, even teeth. The one that Zahir thought should be illegal, as it caused almost anyone it was directed toward to lose their wits for at least a couple of minutes, thus permitting the king to win any argument, no matter how poor his debating points were. "Surely you know by now that few can resist my royal charm."

"Yes, I do know how few can resist your royal charms, Your Majesty." All innocence, Zahir's eyes widened. "I can only hope that one day I will inherit your charisma and persuasive abilities."

"You have potential, Squire." The king's smile eased into what Zahir thought of as his real, private one, rather than is calculated, public one. "That look you just gave me was quite innocently devious."


	71. Chapter 71

Ordeal

This morning, which already felt like a century ago, Garvey had emerged from the Chamber, ashen and shaken but still sane, alive, and confession-less. Now, it was Zahir's turn to prepare for the moment of truth—the cold judgment of whether he was fit to serve the realm as a knight, and the fire that was supposed to forge him into a mighty sword for the kingdom. All his training had led up to this single Ordeal. All his dreams were upon him, and he could only hope that they wouldn't pop like bubbles in the bath that was intended to ritually cleanse his profane self before he entered the Chamber.

Pop-pop-pop went the bubbles in the bath. Each represented someone he had loved and lost. His father. Nadir. Trevor. Nasira. Joren. Aisha. A litany of the dead that clanged in his head like the mournful tolling of funeral bells. Memories of those he had cared about that should have warmed him but instead made him shiver despite the hot water surrounding him.

Zahir scrubbed at his flesh, as if the fervor of his motions could wash away the internal stain of guilt for every one of his many crimes that sullied his soul, making him feel dirty when all he wanted was to be forever clean. He wiped off every speck of dirt he could find, as though the Chamber would instantly incinerate him if every inch of his skin wasn't properly cleaned, or as if he thought that external cleanliness could somehow compensate for internal dirtiness.

"If you survive the Ordeal of Knighthood, you will be a knight of the Realm," King Jonathan was saying in his grave, formal voice. The tone he reserved for important rituals. The solemn tone that stated that he was actually taking tradition seriously. "You will be sworn to protect those weaker than you, to obey your overlord, to live in a way that honors your kingdom and your gods."

Zahir closed his eyes, as memories of all the times he had failed to do those things ripped through his mind and heart. He had hazed first-year pages—inflicting physical and emotional abuse on them. He had hit Myra. He had scoffed at the gods, treating them more often with contempt than reverence. He was prone to arguing with and disobeying his knightmaster, who also happened to be the king to whom Zahir was supposed to owe complete fealty.

To think that he, of all the beings in Tortall, should be a knight was ludicrous. As an obstinate, cruel soul, he deserved harsh punishment and justice, not the mercy of a chance to redeem himself by living righteously, or the utterly undeserved honor of being a knight. He was a ruthless murderer and a despicable thief, not a noble hero. He just wished that he had the courage to leap out of this pool and declare his unworthiness, instead of staying in the water, trying to wash away his guilt and the crushing memory of it.

"To wear the shield of a knight is an important thing," continued Sir Jerome of Haryse, a knight who appeared to be in his early thirties and who seemed to have been appointed as the second knight to advise Zahir as some sort of political reward for an act of heroism while on border patrol near Tusaine. "You may not ignore a cry for help. It means that rich and poor, young and old, male and female, may look to you for rescue, and you cannot deny them."

Well, Zahir thought, closing his eyes as he sank more deeply into the soapy water, at least he had done better with that. He had fought the Nameless Ones in the heart of Black City to free his people from their evil. He had challenged Haashim when that man had sought to oppress the Bazhir. He had tried to protect his tribe and Nasira from Nadir's brutality once it was clear that Nadir intended to assume the role of tyrant instead of leader. He had attacked the man who raped Myra. He had given his own food to the hungry. He had struggled for what he believed to be justice in Tyra. He had visited his friends in prison. He had forgiven his greatest enemy—Haashim—and visited him in prison before the man's execution. Nobody could say that he hadn't tried to save everyone he could and that he didn't mourn everyone he couldn't rescue.

"You are bound to uphold the law," King Jonathan said, and Zahir thought that it was strange that his knightmaster didn't tell him whether he should be upholding northern or Bazhir law, because those legal systems weren't at all the same thing. Should he be enforcing the code in which thieves lost their hands and adulterers were stoned? Should he be enforcing the one where nobles only had to pay a fine for the inconvenience caused to another noble when they arranged for the kidnapping of a maid while the poor commoners who had carried out the crime were sentenced to years of labor that would likely be their deaths? Which system was more just? Did he have the authority to decide? Should he just enforce the northern law outside the desert and the Bazhir law inside it, as the king seemed to do with almost no cognitive dissonance? But was justice really fair if varied based on one's location? Should he just enforce whatever laws he chose wherever he decided? But what was the point of a law code if it could just be ignored by the powerful on the whim of their feelings? How could anyone deal justly with everyone when there were so many questions about the basic nature and definition of justice?

"You may not look away from wrongdoing," the king went on, and Zahir bit his lip, wondering if his knightmaster had done just that two days ago when he hadn't chopped off Zahir's arm for attempted robbery. "You may not help anyone to break the law of the land, and you must prevent the breaking of law at all times, in all cases."

"You are bound to your honor and your word," put in Sir Jerome.

Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, as he dunked his head unederwater to wash it, Zahir noted inwardly that, despite his best efforts to live honorably, he had already disgraced himself in many ways. How could his word mean anything when he had already broken it in the past?

As he emerged from the water, he heard Sir Jerome say, "Act in such a way that when you face the Black God, you need not be ashamed."

Swallowing, Zahir thought that Trevor's and his father's advice when he had spoken to them in his trance in Black City had been pretty much the same. All he could hope for right now was that he wouldn't be meeting the Black God any time soon, because he was so young, and he had so much more he wanted to achieve. Dully, he wondered if Joren had been thinking the same thing as he prepared for his vigil…

"You have learned the laws of chivalry," King Jonathan concluded, as Zahir climbed out of the bath, discovered that the frigid room felt ten times icier now that he was wet, and swiftly wrapped himself in a towel. Hurriedly, eager to get himself as dry as possible as rapidly as he could, he wiped all the water he could off his skin and hair. "Keep them in your heart. Use them as guides when things are their darkest. They will not fail you if you interpret them with humanity and kindness. A knight is gentle. A knight's first duty is to understand."

Slipping into the simple white cotton garments he would wear throughout his vigil and Ordeal, Zahir absorbed every word. The advice might have been nothing more than the last lines of an ancient script that had been reenacted millions of times before and that would be repeated millions of times in the future, but every word was still more valuable than a jewel. Every word had done its part in allowing generations of squires to pass their Ordeals. If the words had helped so many squires in the past, they had the power to assist him in surviving his vigil and Ordeal as long as he listened to them and did not forget them.

Once the king was done speaking and Zahir was finished donning his clothing, they stared at each other for a long moment in which Zahir discovered that he couldn't breathe. He wanted very much to thank his knightmaster for all the time and energy the man had invested in his training, but his mouth wasn't cooperating with him. Instead, it remained silent as King Jonathan's piercing sapphire examined him from head to toe. Biting his lip, he suspected that his knightmaster detected at least a dozen major flaws in him. Suddenly, he felt more naked than he had before he was dressed.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Zahir noticed that Sir Jerome had drifted back and was studying a tile on the wall as though it were the most fascinating object he had ever encountered. With a jolt, Zahir realized that Sir Jerome was providing them with as much privacy as possible before Zahir underwent his vigil and Ordeal. Not that he would be able to take advantage of this privacy, since his lips and mouth were refusing to move.

"I have complete faith in you, Zahir ibn Alhaz," said King Jonathan softly, leaning forward to plant a swift kiss on Zahir's damp forehead. "Shine your light, and let the whole realm see. Bring glory to us all."

Zahir's first impulse was to scream that he was utterly unworthy of the king's trust, since he had lied to the man, defied him, and attempted to steal from him. Yet, he couldn't say that, not when the king was relying upon him to give an appropriate response and not have a guilty breakdown before his Ordeal even began.

"I'll do my duty now and forever, sire," he vowed instead, lifting his chin with all the pride he could muster and hoping that the room was too dim for his knightmaster to see that it was trembling.

"I don't doubt that." Gently, the king pushed Zahir toward the door into the chapel. "Now go and don't look back."

Taking a deep breath, Zahir stepped into the chapel, which was even colder than the room he had just left. About to mentally curse because his thin white garments afforded him such scant protection from the chill, he stifled the inward profanity by remembering that he was in a place consecrated to Mithros. Certainly he didn't want to get smited by the warrior god before he had even set foot in the Chamber. That would good for the palace gossips but very bad for him.

As he crossed the flagstone floor, hearing his clothes swish around him, he wondered resentfully whether the ridiculous outfit he was wearing was some mode of torture (in addition to the Ordeal, as if that wasn't abuse enough) that the northerners had refined over centuries to subject their would-be knights to. The thin fabric made him feel so vulnerable and unprepared to face anything the Ordeal hurled at him, and the white color only made him feel even weaker. White was a feminine color of purity and fragility. It was what most northern brides wore on their wedding day to denote their chastity.

It was silly to think of Zahir as pure. Nobody who had murdered his own uncle in cold blood could be considered pure. No one who had bullied and beaten younger boys could be called pure. Nobody who had disobeyed royal orders and tried to steal from his king was pure. No man who had hit a woman could be seen as pure. His white garments only emphasized his impurity, making him feel like a whore dressed in a virgin's clothes.

Collapsing into the pew nearest the altar and the Chamber that would determine his destiny, Zahir closed his eyes, trying to find some inner peace before the Chamber tormented him. In his desperation, his mind turned to his loved ones, and he found the tension flowing out of his coiled muscles and aching head.

He thought of Laila, who would wrap her fingers gingerly through his, and whisper that the power of darkness was nothing next to the power of love. He thought of Trevor, who would nudge Zahir's shoulder and offer a wry remark that would make this situation seem like an elaborate joke. He thought of his mother, who would have given him a tongue-lashing about how she expected her only son to be stronger than her daughters if she could see him quaking with nerves. He thought of his father, who would have thrashed him—given him something to be _really _afraid of—if he had shown any sort of fear in front of the hard man. He thought of Aisha, who would have charged into any battle to protect him without sparing a moment to consider how her valor might endanger her life. He thought of Hassan, who would offer a piece of firm wisdom. He thought of his baby niece and nephew, who always gazed innocently up into his eyes when he cradled them in his arms. He thought of his knightmaster, who was forever ready to sacrifice for the good of the kingdom.

These were the people Zahir had loved and admired throughout his life. They were the ones who had shaped his mind, carved his heart, and marked his soul. He might be the only person in this freezing chapel, but he had their memories to keep him warm and to ensure that he would never truly be alone. They lived inside his soul, whether they were alive or dead, and he could always depend on them to give him strength, courage, and wisdom. He would succeed for them, because, living or dead, they were relying on him, and he would suffer in the worst portion of the afterlife before he disappointed them by failing his ordeal, and he could pass it because of them.

He could be as gentle and merciful as Laila. He could be as sarcastic and perceptive as Trevor. He could be as tough as his mother. He could be as uncompromising as his father. He could be as brave as Aisha. He could be as wise and selfless as Hassan. He could be as idealistic and affectionate as his niece and nephew. He could be as dutiful as his knightmaster. Everything he needed to pass his Ordeal was inside him, thanks to them.

_I'll make it_, he told himself sternly, trying to picture his success and taste the sweetness of it on his tongue like marzipan. _I'm a star up in the sky, burning into the blackness. I'm a mountain peak, calm and towering above the despairing valleys. I'm a strong wind sweeping across the desert. I'm that little bit of defiance and hope when my back is pressed against the wall. I'm the spark that still blazes after the fire has gone out. I'm a helping hand and a sword of justice. The Bazhir called me a hero with no fear, but I'm not that—I'm better than that. I'm a hero who is stronger than my fears, who will conquer them instead of be vanquished by them. _

Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the golden sun disc depicting Mithros on the wall above the altar. Normally, he disapproved of the northern idolatrous urge to illustrate the unimaginable majesty of the gods, but this time he found himself making a promise, not to the work of art, but to all the listening gods. He swore, deep in his heart, that he would be their humble servant, to be used however they desired. Where there was despair, he would bring hope; where there was doubt, faith; where there was hatred, love; where there was sorrow, joy; where there was guilt, forgiveness; where there was injury, justice and healing; where there was conflict, peace. He would make the world a better place by his presence upon it. Every day of his life he would live for others, not himself. That was the true definition of love and greatness.

He was jolted out of his contemplation by a tap on his shoulder. Starting, he saw a Mithran priest, garbed in orange, pointing at the entrance to the Chamber. Lifting his chin, Zahir reminded himself that he came from a long line of valiant warriors and courageous chiefs. Then, managing not to stumble on legs that were stiff from the cold and hours of disuse, he walked into the black Chamber, once again ready to confront the darkness inside and outside of himself with all the light in his soul and in his world.

His teeth chattered as a gust of cold air, more frigid than any he had ever felt, tore through his thin garments and his skin to freeze his heart and bloodstream. This chill, which could only exist in the cold north made him long for the warmth of his home, but his home wasn't a safe one for him.

_At least it wasn't for him now that he was nine-years-old again, only weeks away from beginning page training at the Royal Palace, a place so far away and with so many different customs that it would be like living in a foreign country. His fear of how he would survive as a stranger in a strange land made him clumsy and distracted as he trained with his father. _

_His sword was blocking almost none of his father's weapon strikes. His feet, usually agile, were sticking in the sand. He was hanging back in a cloud of confusion, rather than surging forward in a lightning attack. _

"_Pathetic," snarled his father, dropping his sword, and yanking Zahir's sword out of his hand. Black eyes smoldering with fury, Alhaz bestowed a vicious box on each of his son's ears. _

_Through the painful ringing in his ears, Zahir heard his father snap, "Why does Mithros torment me with such a cowardly, clumsy idiot instead of a proper warrior? Why did he give me a third daughter in the guise of a son?" _

"_I'll do better, sir," Zahir said, thinking his father was scarier without his sword than with it. _

"_You'd better, boy." Without warning, Alhaz shoved his son to the ground, causing sand to lodge in Zahir's eyes like a dozen jabbing needles. "If not, when you go north, everyone will mark you for the weakling that you are. You'll be the target of all their mockery and a disgrace to your people. You'll never be a respected warrior or leader at your abysmal rate of progress." _

_With a final cuff to Zahir's head, Alhaz scooped up his sword and strode back into the family tent without sparing a glance for his only son, who was wiping the sand form his eyes. Wanting to cry but knowing he would be thrashed severely for every tear, Zahir picked up his sword. He practiced every move until it was as smooth as fresh butter. He practiced until calluses formed on his palms and fingers. Then he practiced until those calluses burst and blood soaked his hands…_

Zahir wanted to weep for the little boy, who was fighting so desperately for an approving word or glance from his stern father, because he knew that there would be no compliments from Alhaz for his effort and only a slap from his mother for coming into her tent for supper with blood and sand all over his hands. Yet, he wouldn't cry for himself, because that little boy had been strong even if Alhaz would have had all his teeth pulled by an incompetent shaman before admitting such a thing. Zahir had been ready to get up and fight again, even after he had been knocked into the sand, and that was what made him a warrior and a leader.

_But he apparently only led people to their deaths, because here he was, in Tyra, kneeling over Trevor's dying body. This time, Trevor was spitting out blame as his last words, hissing, "I hate you, Zahir ibn Alhaz, because you made me die for you." _

That's a lie, Zahir told himself, clenching his fists at the insult the Chamber was giving to Trevor's noble memory. Trevor would never have been bitter about a sacrifice he had willingly made. He would have preferred to save a life than to see a friend die. In Trevor's heart, which was filled with love, there had never been any room for hatred. Trevor would never have held Zahir accountable for his death and would have scolded Zahir for making himself miserable by doing so. The Chamber was just distorting his memories, playing upon his fears, because his real memories weren't terrifying enough.

_That fact, though, was hard to remember now that he was in the desert again, standing before that horrible altar, where his sister, bleeding and in chains, gazed up at him with the blank, condemning stare of the dead. Then, her beaten, bloody lips opened to shout at him, "Zahir, why didn't you save me? I needed you to protect me, and you weren't there. Where were you when I called out your name?" _

Zahir bit his lip to a pulp to prevent himself from screaming. Panting, he reminded himself that this, too, was an illusion. Aisha had always been too strong to look to him for protection. She had always believed that she could not only defend herself but also protect others. The Chamber was insulting his sister's memory—calling her weak—and he didn't have to accept its lies. He had known and loved the real Aisha, the girl who would have mocked him for anything but not being able to rescue her from villains…

_He was in another chapel now, staring down at another dead body—Joren's. Joren's cold blue eyes lanced into Zahir, and he said with an awful smirk, "I'm not sorry, even now, that I kidnapped that wench. She could have died for all I cared. She was just some commoner filth and a servant of a bitch, after all." _

Zahir wanted to scream and shake Joren for being so obtusely unrepentant, but, he realized with a pang, he couldn't win an argument with the dead, and Joren was dead physically and spiritually. He couldn't be forced back into the light when he delighted in the dark. He couldn't become good when he reveled in his own evil. He couldn't be redeemed when he loved his crimes. It was the ultimate folly and arrogance for Zahir, who had his own decisions to make and path to travel, to think that he could make anyone's choices for them or walk their path for them. He could only guide and advise. Somehow, that would have to be enough for him and for them.

The Chamber seemed to have hammered him enough to conclude that he wouldn't shatter even along his fault lines, because the door opened, emitting a gleam of light in the shape of an admonitory finger.

Deciding to put on a performance for the throng in the chapel that he could barely see because even the mild light of dawn seemed harsh to his eyes, which had become accustomed to the absolute blackness of the Chamber, he lifted his chin and walked out of the Chamber with all the strut that he could muster. The northerners would have to be impressed with his strength and courage if he did not look rattled by an Ordeal that had broken two of their young men in three days. They would have to regard him as a worthy warrior, and Zahir ibn Alhaz, contrary to his father's grim expectations, would not have shamed his people.

Applause, shrill in Zahir's ears, rang throughout the chapel, and he asked himself whether there were social points attached to acting especially excited when the king's squire passed his Ordeal.

"Congratulations, Zahir." His face one broad grin, King Jonathan stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Zahir's shoulders. Steering the young man through the crowd of people trying to clap Zahir on the back or catch the monarch's attention, he added dryly, "They never warn you that the _real _Ordeal is weaving your way through the flock of admirers afterward."

"Glad I have the support of an expert to fall back upon," answered Zahir, deadpan, as they moved into the corridor, leaving the horde behind. Then, deciding that it was the perfect moment for a malicious prank during his last official hours as a squire, he clutched the king's wrist, widened his eyes, and whispered frantically, "I confess. I have a horrible confession to make, sire."

"What?" demanded King Jonathan, his forehead knotting as he plainly struggled to keep his voice low.

"I would rather eat a lavish breakfast than go through an Ordeal." Eyes sparkling mischievously, Zahir smirked. "That's the kind of lazy, cowardly soul I am. If I were a northerner, I shudder to think what penance the Mirthran priests would give me."

"That's not funny, Zahir," chided the king, giving Zahir's shoulders a slight shake.

"How can you say that, Your Majesty?" Zahir protested, his miffed tone implying his logic was unassailable. "Everything—timing, delivery, and expression—was spectacular. It was hilarious."

"You have a twisted sense of humor." Unappeased and unimpressed, King Jonathan shook his head reproachfully.

"You can't be mad at me." Zahir's eyes widened innocently. "I'm traumatized by my Ordeal."

"Actually," the king observed, shooting him a sidelong glance, "you seem to be remarkably well after everything you've experienced these past few hours. Many squires can't speak a coherent sentence, nonetheless make a sick joke, after they emerge from the Chamber."

"The Ordeal wasn't as bad as everyone said it would be." His eyes locking on his knightmaster's, Zahir shrugged. "All the Chamber could do was attack me with illusions when I already defeated realities. It could only scare me with lies because it knew I wasn't afraid of the truth. All my fears were in my mind. Once I realized that, the Chamber had no power over me and had no choice but to release me."

"So, you're feeling fine?" the king pressed gently. "There's nothing I can do to make you feel better?"

"There is something you could do for me." Zahir grinned as his stomach, now that all danger had passed, growled for food like a ravenous beast. "Right now, I really want one of those sticky buns you northerners make for Midwinter so that ladies gain a lot of weight during the holiday and are motivated to keep their new year's resolutions to lose a few pounds."

"I think we could have a few brought up from the kitchen." King Jonathan chuckled. "But you'd best not let any northern ladies hear you call them fat. If you do, you'll learn the real meaning of the word ordeal."


	72. Chapter 72

Author's Note: Thank you to all my readers and reviewers who loyally followed this story from its beginnings to its ending despite the sporadic update rate. Hopefully, everyone finds this epilogue solid and satisfying. Every bit of feedback I've received while working on this fic has been valued immensely.

Epilogue: Voice of the Desert

Zahir was back in his home—which wasn't just the blazing desert, but was also the familiar warmth of his family tent with his mother, Laila, Hassan, and his young niece and nephew around him—preparing for the ceremony that would make him Voice of the Tribes.

"Drink," Laila told him, thrusting what had to be a third cup of water into his shaking hand. "You'll be losing quite a bit of blood soon, brother."

Obediently, Zahir downed the water. He wished that his sister hadn't reminded him of the two large cuts that would be sliced into his arms within the hour. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself with the thought that duty demanded his blood be shed in the upcoming rituals.

Before he could undergo the ceremony that, assuming he truly was worthy of the honor (a rather sizable presumption), would make him Voice of the Tribes, he would have to abdicate his position as chief of the tribe in favor of Hassan. The Voice was a member of all tribes and a member of no tribes. He was the embodiment of justice to the Bazhir, and he couldn't be in a position to favor one tribe among the other. He had to be unbiased when resolving disputes between tribes or making decisions for all the Bazhir. As such, it was impossible for him to be both chief and Voice. Fortunately, Zahir knew that he could rely upon Hassan to be a good chief, as he had already proven himself to be a just and able leader. Zahir just wished that both ceremonies didn't involve lots of cutting and bloodshed, but, as the king said, the wild magic that passed along the memories of the Bazhir from one leader to the next had to be transmitted in some powerful. Memories were the blood of the Bazhir, so it only made sense for them to be passed from chief to chief and from Voice to Voice through the exchange of blood. Zahir understood that in theory. Now all that remained was for him to put a brave face on it when it happened in reality.

"He wouldn't be guzzling water like an old camel if he weren't trying to become supreme being of the Bazhir," snorted Zahir's mother, breaking him out of his musing. "Blood is the price he pays for his arrogance."

"You make it sound like being Voice was some glory I sought, Umm." Zahir shook his head. "I assure you that isn't the case. I never asked our current Voice to train me to take his place. Being a Voice is a burden I would never have wanted, but I will do my duty, because I wish to serve my people, not be served by them."

"Spoken with all the sincerity of a northern noble." Jaseena's lips thinned. "My son has a silken tongue even if he has no other strengths."

"You sound truly delighted that I'll be the next Voice, Umm," Zahir observed dryly. "It just seems like you can't contain your excitement no matter how hard you try."

"Humph." Jaseena shrugged. "Voice isn't so bad, not everyone can say their son is the Voice of the Tribes. You just must do nothing as foolish as your affair with that northern slut warrior woman when you are Voice. Otherwise, you will bring disgrace to our whole family."

"Always so reassuring." Smiling slightly because he finally understood that his mother's snide comments were her only way of expressing affection for her children, Zahir leaned forward and kissed her on her cheek below her black headdress. "Thank you, Umm."

"Your sarcasm is one of your worst attributes." Jaseema shooed him away as if her were a particularly pesky and persistent gnat. "I aim for being a realistic, rather than reassuring, mother."

With that, she rose, disappeared behind the curtain that demarcated the female side of the tent, and returned a moment later with her veil on. Holding out a veil to Laila, who obediently donned it, Zahir's mother continued tartly, "It's almost sunset. Time for us to assemble for Zahir's moment in the sun, as the expression goes."

Zahir made a nervous effort to wipe off non-existent sand from his blue—the color of spiritual leadership among the Bazhir—robes. Then, he walked with his family out of the tent to gather at the main fire. As they approached, they saw that the fire had already been lit and was burning bright red against the dying yellow of the sky as the afternoon faded into dusk. Soon, the flames would match the blood red of sunset, and then, not longer after that, only the flames would give flickering light to a world gone entirely black.

Swallowing, Zahir thought that sunset was normally one of his favorite times of day, because it meant that the hard work of the day was finally over, but, tonight, he wasn't looking forward to it. The blood red of dusk reminded him too much of the fact that he would shedding his own blood as the sun died in the great dome above his head. After tonight, he knew that sunset would never be peaceful to him again, because, as the sun went down, his mind would be filled with a thousand voices that were not his own, but those of his people's. Those of the people who were all around him now. Those of the people he was supposed to love more than himself. Those of the people he was to serve and sacrifice for until the energy of his last breath ebbed from his body. Those of the people that his mother, Laila, and the twins were sitting down among. The people of all ages- the babies cradled in the arms of their mothers, the children running around giggling and ignoring the smacks and scolds of their parents, the teenagers who tried to flirt despite the inconveniences of veils and headdresses, the husbands and wives whispering to one another before the meeting began, and the elderly rubbing their aching bones—that he was supposed to understand and champion.

There were so many of them, he thought in awe, as he made his way to the center of the gathering with Hassan at his side. King Jonathan, also in blue robes, was waiting for them by the fire.

"We are assembled around this sacred fire tonight to witness two joyous initiation ceremonies," the king announced, his voice confident enough to make even the most rambunctious children sit down and the most gregarious couples stop chatting. "We begin with the installment of Hassan ibn Taymur as chief of his tribe."

Recognizing his cue, Zahir stepped forward and declared with all the authority that he could muster, "I, Zahir ibn Alhaz, in the presence of all these witnesses, do formally announce that I am abdicating, now and forever, my position as chief in favor of my brother-in-law, Hassan ibn Taymur."

Stepping forward as well, Hassan pledged, "I, Hassan ibn Taymur, in the presence of the assembled witnesses, do accept the responsibilities Zahir ibn Alhaz has offered me, and I do solemnly vow that I will rule my tribe with justice, mercy, and truth."

"I wish to hand over the authority that I wield to my brother-in-law." Proud that neither his voice nor his body was shaking, Zahir extended his hand toward the king, who removed a dagger from the folds of his robes and pressed it into Zahir's palm. For an instant, he only felt a pleasant coolness as the knife penetrated skin. As the dagger, finished making the incision, removed itself from his body, waves of pain rippled through him, and he started to taste blood in his mouth.

While all the Bazhir looked on, the king made a similar slice in Hassan's palm. Watching the knife plunge in and out of his brother-in-law's skin, Zahir bit his lip, knowing all too well the pain of even such a small cut on so delicate a place.

Once Hassan's palm was as streaked with blood as Zahir's, the king raised both their hands toward the heavens, shouting, "Gods and men can see that it is time for the new to replace the old. Men can see that these two men are separate, but by the power of the gods, they shall become one. By the power of the gods, the power of the old will enter the new, the wisdom of the old will infuse the new, the righteousness of the old will fill the new, and the mercy of the old will stay the hand of the new."

With those ritual words, the king smashed Hassan's and Zahir's bleeding palms together and ground their hands into each other, so their blood didn't just mingle, but fused. As his blood merged with that of his brother-in-law, Zahir's body was overcome by dizziness and nausea. He felt as though all his strength, his courage, his integrity, his knowledge, and everything that made him who he was and in any way fit to rule his tribe was washing out of him with his blood, into Hassan. He wanted to howl and faint at the same time, but gritting his teeth and stiffening his spine, he let himself be drained until he could feel the rite come to an abrupt end when he was so empty inside that there was nothing more that the raw, vast power could take from him and give to Hassan.

Hassan, looking as though a tidal wave of wisdom, power, justice, and eternity had swept over him, knelt before the king, preparing for the final, official acknowledgement of him as the new chief of what had, moments ago, been Zahir's tribe.

"Hassan ibn Taymur," King Jonathan intoned somberly, "you and your people wish you to take your brother-in-law's place as chief of your people."

"I do." Hassan offered the traditional response. "I cannot speak for my tribe."

"But you would become the leader and voice of your tribe with my permission," answered the king, following the script that had been handed down from hundreds of earlier generations.

"I would." Hassan kept his head lowered as he provided the ancient reply.

"It is a grave honor to serve as voice of your tribe," continued the king. "You will be responsible for defending your people, as well as enforcing their ancient laws and customs. They will turn to you as a voice of reason and fairness. They will depend upon you for leadership and guidance. Your people will rely upon you to be their voice when they cannot speak for themselves. Do you understand the obligations of being a tribe chief now?"

"I do." As custom dictated, Hassan gazed deeply into the king's penetrating eyes.

"Then you know how much trust your people and I are putting in you in this ceremony," King Jonathan concluded. He ran his dagger along his palm, creating a shallow cut. As the blood began to flow from the wound, he reached out and rubbed it against Hassan's forehead. Once there was a scarlet mark on his forehead, the king pressed his hand against each of Hassan's cheeks. "Now, arise and be chief."

Applause rang throughout the crowd as Hassan went over to sit in front of Laila, who leaned forward to wrap a blanket around her husband's shoulders.

Zahir's body, numb from the rite he had performed with Hassan, began to warm at this obvious display of affection, and he would have smiled if he had not known that the biggest trial of the evening for him was still ahead.

King Jonathan raised his hands began chanting in the ancient language of the Bazhir. Speaking swiftly, describing centuries of time in seconds, he related the history of the Bazhir, their triumphs and tragedies, their strong sense honor and fierce need for freedom, and their brutal conflicts with invaders and with themselves. He emphasized the special relationship that the gods had always had with the Bazhir and asked the gods to be present this evening so that the gods' will might be done. As the king spoke, Zahir felt a powerful charge, as wild as lightning and as eternal as the gods, fill the air, gathering strength with every word that the Voice spoke.

When he finished his chant, King Jonathan pulled out his dagger. Clenching it in his left fist, he shouted, "As the gods will, so mote it be!"

Zahir wanted to look away as the knife tore a long gash into his former knightmaster's forearm, but the power in the air kept his eyes locked on the king. He wanted to scream, but the ritual bound his lips with invisible chains, making it impossible for him to speak any words but the proper ones at the right times.

Obeying the power rather than his own will, Zahir rolled back his sleeve and made an identical cut along his own forearm. The pain was instant and intense, as if the magic of the rite was multiplying the agony of every lost drop of blood by tenfold. Instinctively, his eyes lit on the only being in the crowd who could possibly appreciate the agony he was in. The king's eyes met his own, and, in his gaze, Zahir could see the suffering his people had endured throughout their history and the rough wisdom gained by every hardship.

They were all one in pain even more than they were all one in joy, Zahir—who was himself, but not himself, in this ritual—realized. King Jonathan put his hand above the fire and reached out to grab Zahir's arm. Reflexively, not remembering that this was the next stage in the rite and motivated only by the instinct to share pain, Zahir clasped the king's arm in return. Their blood mingled together and then dripped into the fire, which hissed in protest.

"Two as One," King Jonathan intoned, and the power surging more strongly than ever in Zahir's veins assured him that this was true, now and forever. He and the northern king were bound by blood. Their blood had been mixed and spilled together. They would always be with one another and inside of each other. They were one, and they would always understand each other because of this moment in which they had stood outside of time together, holding onto one another's bleeding arms. Zahir was the future, King Jonathan was the past, and here was the moment that they clashed and made peace with one another in the most agonizing and satisfying way.

"Two as One," repeated Zahir, as the future must also echo the part. He knew that to be true now, because he could see the generations of his people that had culminated in the present, and he could see the faces of his descendents. He could see the leaders of his tribe that had come before him and that would rule after him. He could hear, resonating throughout the ages as if time was nothing and death a mere veil that could easily be pushed aide, the Voices of the past whispering to him, and he could hear the souls of the yet unborn Voices speaking to him, as well.

"Two as One, and Many." King Jonathan's voice was weaker, and Zahir knew that the power flowing into him was ebbing from his former knightmaster. It always cost the past to give wisdom and truth to the future generations, but it had to be done, every Voice from history and the future assured him, or else his people wouldn't survive. Only sacrifice from the old and the young for the good of all sustained the Bazhir until the crack of doom.

"Two as One, and Many." Zahir shivered, knowing that every word he spoke was absolutely and profoundly true. They were all one. He could feel the grief of every person that had ever set foot on the sand of the desert that he called his home. He could feel the weight of the responsibilities that had crushed their souls. He could feel the burdens they had struggled to carry. He could feel the joys that had made them feel like they could fly. He could feel their exhilaration when they went for morning rides. He could feel their rage when they fought for their lives. He could feel their anger when they were wronged. He could feel their love when they defended their families. He could hear the cries that they stifled into their pillows at night. He could see the dreams that they hadn't dared to have die. He could see their determination as they maintained their traditions in opposition to the Tortallans who had conquered them. He could feel their fierce pride in their identity. He could feel it all, and he was a part of all of it and of none of it. He could feel it all, and the knowledge that every being who had ever existed and would ever exist was as complex as he was him was mind-numbing, and the idea that he was expected to rule over people was, if anything, even more stupefying.

The fire flared around them, engulfing them both in flames, but Zahir felt no pain. He only saw the history of his people in the fire. He saw them leaving their old land and settling in what would become the desert. He saw them being tricked into serving the Nameless Ones as slaves. He saw them finally realizing that they were wrong and rising up in revolt against the nameless oppressors. He saw, in precious lives and in the scorching desert they created to keep the Nameless Ones at bay for centuries, the price they paid to preserve themselves. He saw their culture develop to deal with the demands of the desert. He saw them fight to keep the invaders from the Thanic Empire out of the desert, and he saw their triumph in forcing these clever conquerors out by virtue of marvelous shooting and impeccable horsemanship. He saw their shame when they couldn't keep out, after years of vicious fighting, King Jasson's troop. He saw how many tears were shed over every lost grain of sand. He saw the Bazhir insist, as the only tem of their shameful surrender, that they have a steward in Persopolis—which should have been their city to rule—to keep the keys to the room that allowed them to guard the city of the Nameless Ones. He saw, as dispassionately as if he had never known the man, the northern prince become Voice of the Tribes, honoring the Bazhir by becoming their legitimate leader, but also making it so that peace would have to exist between the northerners and the Bazhir, because the Bazhir could not revolt against their Voice.

Then, he saw, to his own surprise, his own place in history. It was a humblingly small one—he was the Voice of Bazhir birth, from one of the renegade tribes that had resisted King Roald's rule, who would die on the battlefield for the northern king a week before his twenty-third birthday. He was the Voice who would die fighting for Tortall, rather than against it. His death on the battlefield would ensure peace between the northerners and the Bazhir as nothing else could have. His death would make the Bazhir finally see themselves as one with the northerners. That was his destiny. He couldn't fight it, even if he wanted to. Unlike King Jonathan, he wouldn't die old with his family scattered around him; he would die young and alone in battle, but who could say that was really less great than the king's?

"One as many," King Jonathan spoke the final words, and so much magic poured out of him into Zahir that Zahir felt his bones hurt from shaking. He felt transcendent and almost omnipotent. He was simultaneously more attuned to his body than he had ever been before—conscious of every heartbeat and every breath that filled his lungs—and farther removed from it than he had ever been before. It was as though he could sense beyond three, or even four, dimensions, and it felt as if he could grasp onto the very fabric of space and time, and twist it any way that suited him.

"One as many," Zahir whispered. Then a howl tore through his lips as his skin, beside the cut he had made himself, ripped open, in a deep slice. Blue blood flowed out of the wound, which hurt more than any he had ever sustained, and it seemed to take an eternity to cauterize in the heat of the fire. When it finally did, he felt himself falling back toward the ring of spectators.

For a moment, silence filled the air, and Zahir could feel the power finally departing, leaving only a trace in his veins as proof that it had ever surged through him, controlling his mind and body. Then, applause and whistles rose from the crowd.

Trying not to start his term as Voice with an impressive stint on his backside, Zahir pushed himself up and crossed over to the king, who had also fallen backward.

"We match," he muttered, pointing at the blue scar that rang along King Jonathan's forearm, as he helped the former Voice to his feet. "We're marked men."

"And scarred for life, which is normally how scars work, anyway, so that's not saying as much as many people seem to believe it is," the king observed dryly. Then, there was a pause, in which Zahir could feel soft, inquiring tendrils reaching out to him through the bond they shared, and, he felt a jolt as he recognized himself, not as the inferior and the supplicant, but as the superior and the granter. He really was Voice to his own king. "Are you all right, Zahir?"

Remembering that, as Voice, it was his job to begin the feast, Zahir grabbed a pomegranate from a basket, bit into it, and tossed a date to the king, taking advantage of the opportunity to eat first.

"I die young," he said quietly, watching as the Bazhir began to talk and joke with their neighbors as they ate joyously from the bounty in baskets before them. "Ever since I was a page, I used to wonder whether I would actually have the strength and courage to die in battle for king and country like I was trained to do, but now I don't have to wonder any longer. I know that I do have that strength and courage."

"It's funny you doubted it." King Jonathan offered a faint smile that seemed to be more about grief than happiness. "I never did. Your soul is as true as steel, Voice of the Tribes. It has been tested by many fires, as I know better than many, and it has yet to be found seriously wanting. Fire doesn't melt your strength or courage; it only forges them into more powerful weapons."

"I'm not afraid to die," Zahir replied, not wanting his king to pity him for his destiny when he felt no terrible sorrow over it. "When I die, I'll be reunited with Aisha, Trevor, and my father. I'll be with those that I have loved and lost, and, one day, those who have lost me, will join me. I'm alive now, but I have one foot in the grave. Why should I complain when the other one joins it?"

Looking into King Jonathan's bright gaze, and seeing the eyes of the only man who had gone through the flames like he had, he added, "You know how it feels to be alive even though a part of you has died. I think that nobody else in this land understands that quite as well as we do."

"It's one of the blessings and burdens of having gone through the ritual of becoming the Voice, yes." King Jonathan nodded, and his smile became broader and more about joy than pain. "We get our pleasure from knowing that we will die, but not quite yet."

"Exactly." Zahir grinned. Then, he caught sight of Khalila weaving her way through the crowd to congratulate him, and said, "Excuse me."

Without waiting for a response, he hurried off to meet Khalila.

"I'm so proud of you," she burst out, flinging her arms around him as soon as they found themselves face-to-face. Pressing her head against his chest, so that he could feel her tears joining with his sweat to make his shirt even damper, she went on in a whisper, "I was so afraid that you were going to die."

"That's not my destiny." He brushed the tears away from her eyes. Forcing himself to be honest with her, even if that made her decide to break their engagement, he continued softly, "I die when I'm twenty-three on the battlefield. Maybe you should look for a husband who can provide for you longer."

"Maybe you should stop talking nonsense," she said, running her hands along his chest. "The widow of a Voice will always be looked after by the Bazhir, and I doubt that Hassan or my father would let me starve. Oh, and I also wouldn't let me starve, so thank you for your concern, but not everyone is completely hopeless without you, Zahir."

"I love you," Zahir murmurred, wishing that he could touch every inch of her skin at that moment, but knowing that he could not. "I don't want marrying me to cause you sorrow."

"Honorable men, such as yourself, have so many quaint ideas about women." Khalila chuckled. "They seem to think that women marry out of an overwhelming desire to be protected and provided for, rather than out of a need to love and be loved, so, let me explain the obvious to you, Zahir, I love you. That means that I want to share your joy and your pain. I wouldn't be worthy of your love if I wasn't willing to be your wife in triumph and in tragedy. You are mine, and even death will not be able to steal your love from me."

"I am yours," Zahir agreed, wrapping his hands around hers and feeling the promise of an eternity spent together in each pulse of her veins against his. "Now and forever."


End file.
